drug cult

Introduction

      group using drugs to achieve religious (religious experience) or spiritual revelation and for ritualistic purposes.

      Though the idea may be strange to most modern worshippers, drugs have played an important role in the history of religions. The ceremonial use of wine and incense in contemporary ritual is probably a relic of a time when the psychological effects of these substances were designed to bring the worshipper into closer touch with supernatural forces. Modern studies of the hallucinogenic (hallucinogen) drugs have indicated that such drugs, in certain persons under certain conditions, release or bring about what those persons claim to be profound mystical (mysticism) and transcendental experiences, involving an immediate, subjective experience of ultimate reality, or the divine, resulting from the stirring of deeply buried unconscious and largely nonrational reactions. Modern students of pharmacological cults who have participated in cultic drug ceremonies and used the drugs themselves have been astonished at the depth of such experiences. R. Gordon Wasson has suggested that the religious impulse itself may have had its origin in the amazement felt by primitives on accidentally finding and ingesting plants with hallucinogenic properties while foraging for food; this view is not held by most scholars of religion.

      Whatever the psychological origins of such reactions, they are viewed as religious in nature and have been structured and channelled through cultic forms. Through cultic leaders—such as shamans, witch doctors, and medicine men—as well as through tradition, pharmacological cults have specified not only how the cultic drugs should be assimilated but also how they should be gathered and prepared; generally also there are specifications for participants' behaviour outside the ceremonies, in the practical affairs of living. Western observers of primitive cultures, such as missionaries, colonial administrators, and travellers, have often regarded such practices as demonstrating superstition and folly. Anthropologists and other scientific observers who have attempted to participate sympathetically in tribal rituals, however, not only have reported the useful aspects of such practices in primitive society but also have collected information that is of use to science, medicine, religion, and social theory.

      Drugs usually encountered in cultic ceremonies are generally classifiable as narcotic. Few of these are true narcotics, however, in the sense of being numbing or producing sleep. They are called hallucinogens when they produce changes in perception. A hallucinogenic drug may lead to experiences that resemble psychoses, in which case it is called psychotomimetic; under other circumstances it may cause a quasi-mystical, or psychedelic, experience. Most psychedelic drugs tend to stimulate rather than numb the mind, whereas some true narcotics, such as alcohol and opium, in turn stimulate and stupefy the mind at different stages of their physical effect. Most cultic drugs come from plants, though Western cults more recently formed have made use of the active principles of natural drugs in synthetic form and of synthetic analogs of naturally occurring compounds.

Types of drugs used by cults

      Of more than 100 plants known to have properties that affect the mind, more being discovered every year, only a few of the major drugs used by cults will be referred to here. Though these drugs vary greatly in composition, their effects tend to be similar. Such factors as the personality, mood, and expectation of the user, the setting, the nature of those in charge, and the interpretation of the experience may have a more significant effect on the experience than do the specific properties of the drug.

      At one time or another, such common substances as alcohol, tobacco, coffee, and tea have been used in religious cults, but such use is not common today.

hemp, mushrooms, cacti, and their derivatives

      Probably the most widespread plant having psychedelic properties and used in cults is Indian hemp, Cannabis sativa, which grows all over the world except in very cold climates. It is used in religious practices in India and Africa (and probably elsewhere) and is also sometimes used illicitly in the United States and Europe.

      Certain mushrooms (mushroom) are used by cultists among the Indians in Latin America, especially in the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. The chief species is Psilocybe mexicana, of which the active principle is psilocybin and its derivative psilocin (psilocin and psilocybin), in their chemical composition and activity not unlike LSD (D-lysergic acid diethylamide); the latter is synthesized from the alkaloids (principally ergotamine (ergot) and ergonovine) that are constituents of ergot, a growth present in grasses affected by the disease also called ergot. Amanita muscaria (fly agaric) is another mushroom having hallucinogenic properties that has not been thoroughly studied. It may be extremely important, since it may have been the natural source of the ritual soma drink of the ancient Hindus and the comparable haoma used by the Zoroastrians (see below History of drug use in religion (drug cult)). Fly agaric, which is extremely toxic, is said to have, in addition to its hallucinogenic properties, the ability to increase strength and endurance; it is said also to be a soporific.

      Indians of Mexico discovered other plants with somewhat similar properties. The tops of the peyote cactus, Lophophora williamsii, may be dried to form the so-called mescal buttons (to be distinguished from the mescal bean, another mind-expanding but highly poisonous plant found in the same area), which are ingested by widely distributed groups of Indians in Mexico, the United States, and Canada during night-long ceremonies that have been described and studied by a number of anthropologists. The chief active principle of peyote is an alkaloid called mescaline. Like psilocin and psilocybin, mescaline is reputed to produce visions and other evidences of a mystical nature. Despite claims of missionaries and some government agents that peyote—from the Nahuatl word peyotl (“divine messenger”)—is a degenerative and dangerous drug, there appears to be no evidence of this among the members of the Native American Church, a North American Indian cult that uses peyote in its chief religious ceremony (see below). Peyote, like most other hallucinogenic drugs, is not considered to be addictive and, far from being a destructive influence, is reputed by cultists and some observers to promote morality and ethical behaviour among the Indians who use it ritually.

Other psychedelic substances

      Spanish missionaries to Mexico in the 16th century described, primarily in derogatory language, another psychedelic substance, called by the Indians ololiuqui and venerated highly. Ololiuqui has been identified as the seeds of the morning glory, Rivea corymbosa (also called Turbina corymbosa); the name has also come to be applied to another morning glory, Ipomoea tricolor (also called I. rubrocaerulea or I. violacea). Since the active principles are the alkaloids D-lysergic and D-isolysergic acids, their properties are very similar to those of LSD, producing visions and mystical experiences.

      Columbus described the ceremonial sniffing of a powder encountered during one of his voyages to the West Indies. Of the many kinds of snuff, the chief variety was called yopo, paricá, or cohoba, a powerful hallucinogen derived from parts of a tree, Piptadenia peregrina. This narcotic snuff may be confused with others, as yet not clearly differentiated.

      Another substance used in South America, especially in the Amazon basin, is a drink called ayahuasca, caapi, or yajé, which is produced from the stem bark of the vines Banisteriopsis caapi and B. inebrians. Indians who use it claim that its virtues include healing powers and the power to induce clairvoyance, among others. This drink has been certified by investigators to produce remarkable effects, often involving the sensation of flying. The effects are thought to be attributable to the action of harmine, a very stable indole (structurally related to LSD) that is the active principle in the plant.

      The kava drink, prepared from the roots of Piper methysticum, a species of pepper, and seemingly more of a hypnotic–narcotic than a hallucinogen, is used both socially and ritually in the South Pacific, especially in Polynesia. Iboga, or ibogaine, a powerful stimulant and hallucinogen derived from the root of the African shrub Tabernanthe iboga (and, like psilocybin and harmine, a chemical relative of LSD), is used by the Bwiti cult in Central Africa. coca, source of cocaine, has had both ritual and social use chiefly in Peru. Datura, one species of which is the jimsonweed, is used by native peoples in North and South America; the active principle, however, is highly toxic and dangerous. A drink prepared from the shrub Mimosa hostilis that is said to produce glorious visions in warriors before battle, is used ritually in the ajuca ceremony of the Jurema cult in eastern Brazil.

Goals of practitioners

      The drugs used by cults for their hallucinogenic effects were adopted for explicit and implicit religious functions and purposes. The drugs were and are reported to enhance religious experience. Controlled laboratory investigations of the effects of such drugs, performed outside a culturally determined cultic framework, help to make the cults more understandable.

ecstasy and union with the divine or sacred

      The loftiest aim of the cultic use of drugs is the pure delight in what is described as a direct experience of God, ultimate reality, the spirits that preside over one's destiny, or whatever the worshipper may conceive as his object of worship. As a consequence of such worship experience there may ensue a feeling of self-transcendence, sometimes through a melting away of the ego boundaries (with consequent loss of sense of self) and even through the terror of death, resulting in a psychological rebirth that gives a feeling of power and freedom and releases creative energies. Drugs have been used ritually to enhance the puberty ordeal through which, among many peoples, a youth is ushered out of childhood and is certified an adult. The functions of the drugs as teachers, leading participants through experiences of spiritual growth, are attested by many members of contemporary drug cults.

      As a means of appropriating such experiences, the rites surrounding the assimilation of the drugs become types of sacraments (sacrament) in which the qualities and the gifts of the gods are appropriated. The visions, self-knowledge, energy, power, and direction reported to be secured from the rite confirm the feeling of the worshipper that he has been in the presence of God or has assimilated some of God's powers. Other specific skills and benefits—either real or the products of fancy—may be extrapolated from this alleged encounter with the gods, such as sexual attractiveness, skill and luck in hunting, protection in war, or even the ability to transcend war and to love one's enemies.

Purification (purification rite), healing, and divination

      Along with the sacramental function of the drug cults is the concept of purification through drug use. This may take the form of certain ritualistic preparations for the ceremony or the observing of certain taboos for days before it, or may be a part of the ceremony itself. Many psychedelic drugs produce nausea, and the consequent vomiting may be looked on as a purging of faults. In more advanced cults the purification may be seen as the pure and ethical living that should both precede and follow the ceremony. Closely related to the latter may be the devotional function, viewed in the most primitive drug cults as acts of propitiation of the gods for expected favours and in the more developed cults as acts directed toward the needs and wishes of the god through the cultic experience. Ritual drug taking may also be viewed as an act of devotion in itself.

      In some of the more primitive cults the ordinary participant is relegated to a secondary role, for the priest or shaman (shamanism) may be the one who principally ingests the drug and mediates benefits, real or supposed, to the worshipper or suppliant. Such is the case when healing (healing cult) is the chief function, when the drug is dangerous, or when it is reserved for those persons having the most prestige. Mediation is also likely to occur when divination of the answers to important questions is involved; e.g., whether to set out on a journey or where to find lost property.

witchcraft and magic

      Some pharmacological cults do not rise much above the level of witchcraft, with ceremonies expressing the participants' insecurities, anxieties, and hostilities. This is particularly true of cults operating among a marginal, competitive people, as in the Peruvian cult that uses ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi). This is a syncretistic cult in which primitive magical beliefs are interwoven with minimal Roman Catholic features. Bad luck is looked on as the result of the curse of an envious neighbour, and the witch doctor is sought to dispel the curse and, if possible, to turn it onto its originator. At other times illness may be interpreted as the result of possession by evil spirits, and the purpose of the ceremony may be exorcism. In all of these cases the visions produced by the drugs, influenced by the assumptions and desires of the participants, will be interpreted according to the hopes and fears, prejudices, and suspicions of those participants.

Psychological goals

      The literal meaning of the term psychedelic (“mind-manifesting”) suggests the vast amount of material (feelings, images, etc.) released by these drugs from the unconscious. This material, related as it is to the psychological needs and history of the person, is viewed as both uplifting and creative and, on the other hand, frightening and destructive. Though these drugs are regarded as dangerous by industrially advanced societies and their medical advisers, cults using such drugs (drug use) have exhibited durability, and in the societies that harbour them there is apparently little or no abuse of the drugs, despite open access to them. Perhaps these cults are so structured that they meet basic psychological needs fairly well, and the resulting cultural expressions are mainly creative and constructive. Hostilities and anxieties expressed in ritual are sublimated and, therefore, less likely to be acted out. Persons who have taken the drugs maintain that they can engender a closeness of feeling among cultic participants that may satisfy the need for comradeship that is one of man's most basic desires, while the excitement of the experience may rescue participants from one of mankind's most pervasive enemies, boredom.

History of drug use in religion

      References to the ritual use of drugs are scattered through the history of religions, and there is no doubt that the practice is ancient, its origins lost in prehistory. Presumed ceremonial use of Cannabis among the Scythians in the 5th to 2nd century BC is suggested by the censers for burning hemp seeds found in the frozen tombs at Pazyryk in the Altai Mountains. The ancient Greeks (Greek religion) used wine in Dionysian rites, and circumstantial evidence points to the use of a hallucinogenic substance in the most solemn moments of the Eleusinian Mysteries of ancient Greece: the drinking of kykeōn, a thick gruel of unknown composition. Both the secular and the cultic use of the Amanita muscaria mushroom in Siberia probably go back more than 6,000 years, and cultic use has spread beyond the cool temperate climates where the mushroom grows. Evidence of the cultic use of opium in the eastern Mediterranean islands, in Greece, and among the Sumerians points to dates as early as 3000 BC, though some of this evidence is disputed.

      One of the pharmacological mysteries is the nature of the Zoroastrian haoma and the early Hindu soma, both sacred drinks made from plants. Their source may have been the Amanita muscaria mushroom, the mind-affecting chemicals of which pass into the urine with their properties very little diminished; there are scriptural references to sacred urine drunk as the source of divine insights. Allusions to the twigs and branches of haoma, however, suggest other plants, perhaps hemp. The mushroom, which does not grow in hot countries, may have been introduced to India by Aryan invaders from the north; subsequently, other plants may have been substituted until their identity was confused and lost.

      There is less evidence for the historical use of drugs in Buddhism or Taoism, though it is mentioned occasionally. In Islām, which prohibits use of alcohol, there has been much more general use of Cannabis. The fanatical sect known as the Assassins (Assassin), founded in the 11th century, used hashish; (hashish) their name is derived from an Arabic word denoting a consumer of hashish. Sensational and fanciful stories, told by Marco Polo and others, of the use of hashish to heighten the undoubted homicidal proclivities of the sect, may, however, be untrue.

      The use of kava was reported by travellers to the Pacific Islands, notably Fiji, in the 18th century, though its use must go back much farther. The same may be said for the cultic use of drugs like iboga, in equatorial Africa, where the discovery of such usage is very recent and where historical records are meagre. Doubtless much remains to be discovered in both of these areas.

      More is known of the history and practices of pharmacological cults, as well as of the varieties of botanical sources of the drugs, in the New World than in the Old. The finding of many little images sculptured in the form of mushrooms in Guatemala almost certainly indicates a mushroom cult in the Mayan culture of Central America. Columbus reported the use of snuffs, as referred to above. The Spanish priest-historian Bernardino de Sahagún reported with disapproval the cultic use of mushrooms in Mexico in the 16th century, and there were reports of the widespread use of psychotropic mushrooms during the coronation of the Aztec emperor Montezuma in 1502. Suppressed by the Spaniards, the remnants of these once proud cults remain in the backcountry of Mexico, particularly in the state of Oaxaca. In 1955 R. Gordon Wasson and his companions were the first non-Indians invited to eat the sacred mushroom at one of the night ceremonies. Consequent publicity led to an influx of visitors seeking mushrooms and also attracted the attention of Mexican federal police. Despite this attention, the mushroom religion is still alive, though the ceremonies are now carried on less openly.

      Spanish reports of about the same era as those dealing with Mexico allude to cultic use of drugs in North America. Sahagún also mentioned in his reports the cultic use of ololiuqui and peyote.

      Partly because of the rise of interest in psychedelic drugs, as well as the increased accessibility, the peyote religion has been studied more thoroughly than any other pharmacological cult, mainly by American anthropologists, who have written full and extensive reports of its practices. The peyote cult was harassed by missionaries and government agents alike until, toward the end of the 19th century, Indian cults began to come together in an international body composed of Canadian, American, and Mexican Indians. This federation was finally incorporated in the state of Oklahoma in 1918 as the Native American Church. Despite many laws against the use of peyote, these members of the Native American Church have steadfastly maintained their right to worship in their own way. They have suffered imprisonment and have fought in the courts, which, for the most part, have upheld this right.

      The Native American Church has developed into a syncretistic religion, differing from tribe to tribe in minor details and in the degree to which ancient practices have assimilated Christian elements. The ritual surrounding ingestion of peyote is a highly symbolic night-long ceremony in the charge of an experienced Indian. Whites privileged to attend the service invariably speak of its dignity and impressiveness. Peyote itself is highly venerated and spoken of sometimes as a gift of God, sometimes personified as the Peyote Spirit. It is looked on partly as the possessor of magical qualities of protection and healing and the revealer of hidden knowledge, and partly as a guide that motivates and strengthens the worshipper. There is as much controversy among the Indians themselves over peyote as there is over LSD among whites. But the cult seems to be spreading. Contrary to the assertions of Christian missionaries, who find them hard to convert, the peyote Indians, doubtless influenced by the religions of whites around them, are reported to be superior to the nonpeyote Indians in achieving their aims of brotherly love, hard work and self-reliance, family responsibility, and abstinence from alcohol.

      Because hallucinogenic drugs, both natural and synthetic, tend to evoke an experience spontaneously recognized by many as religious and therefore of supreme value to the user, small communities of seekers have grown up wherever the drugs are generally used, most recently among whites in large centres of population. Because of what they consider to be harassment by unsympathetic elements in the cities, many such communities have moved to rural or wilderness areas. Emphasis on spontaneity leads to poor organization, and consequently the histories of most of these communities are short.

Walter Houston Clark Ed.

Additional Reading

General works dealing with drug cults include R.C. Zaehner, Mysticism, Sacred and Profane (1957, reissued 1980), mainly a criticism of the views of Aldous Huxley on drugs, and Drugs, Mysticism, and Make-Believe (1972; also published as Zen, Drugs, and Mysticism, 1973); W.T. Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy (1960, reprinted 1987), a very clear account of mysticism that alludes to drugs; Daniel H. Efron, Bo Holmstedt, and Nathan S. Kline (eds.), Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs (1967, reissued 1979), a review by international experts, including material on cults; Peter T. Furst (ed.), Flesh of the Gods: The Ritual Use of Hallucinogens (1972, reissued with changes, 1990), based on a 1970 lecture series; and Paul H. Ballard (ed.), Psychedelic Religion? (1972), a collection of papers from a colloquium. Valentina Pavlovna Wasson and R. Gordon Wasson, Mushrooms, Russia, and History, 2 vol. (1957); and R. Gordon Wasson, Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality (1968), are required readings for those who wish to be thoroughly informed on mushroom cults. References on peyote include J.S. Slotkin, The Peyote Religion (1956, reprinted 1975), a detailed and thorough reference; Weston La Barre, The Peyote Cult, 5th ed., enlarged (1989); Guy Mount, The Peyote Book: A Study of Native Medicine, 3rd ed. (1993); and Fernando Benítez, In the Magic Land of Peyote (1975; originally published in Spanish, 1968), and Los hongos alucinantes, 6th ed. (1985), by an authority on the use of hallucinogens among the Indians of Mexico.Walter Houston Clark Ed.

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