Divination, altered states and psychedelics

There is a long history of different methods of inducing altered, heightened or trance-like states for divination. The word “trance” derives from Latin transire, “to pass or move across,” and is related to transit, transition and transient. All altered states involve a transition or disconnect of some kind from the waking state of ordinary life; then a period of time in which the psychological functioning of mind, emotion and perception are different; and then a return to the ordinary waking state for integration and application. Trances and altered states follow the pattern of a journey: departure, travelling through (interior) space, and then returning home. In the classic shamanic journey traditions, rhythmic drumming, rattling or chanting is used to facilitate the entering into, travelling through and returning from the spirit world – while the physical body lies prone on the ground. Research in consciousness and brain function suggest that something called auditory driving or entrainment takes place: the rhythmic beat of the drum brings the rhythms of breathing, of the heart, and of the brain into resonance or coherence with each other.

The other main method for inducing the divinatory journey trance in shamanic traditions worldwide involves psychoactive, visionary or entheogenic plants or fungi, such as ayahuasca in South America, iboga in Equatorial Africa, and the psilocybe mushroom (teonanácatl) in Meso-America. Among the Mazatecs in the highlands of Mexico there is the rare use of a infusions of a leafy plant called the “sage of the diviners” (salvia divinorum). It appears that the choice of which method is used is partly a function of ecology: in the Northern hemisphere areas of Asia (where the word shaman originates), Europe and America the use of rhythmic drumming is more common; whereas in the tropical regions, where plant diversity is greater, plants, roots and fungi have been found that profoundly alter consciousness.

The choice of method may be a function of history and the socio-political context: Michael Harner has suggested that in Central Europe the rhythmic drumming journey method (still used by the Sami in Northern Scandinavia) was, during the Middle Ages, abandoned by shamanic practitioners (known as “witches”), to avoid detection by the enforcers of the Inquisition. Instead, the silent and therefore safer use of plants was adopted for shamanic journey work, giving rise to the folklore of witches’ ointments and brews. Unfortunately, the psychoactive plants available in the Central European temperate zone are from the solanaceous nightshade family (datura, henbane, belladonna), in which the dissociative factor is particularly strong, making this method less reliable and more complicated.

It should be said too that in classic entheogenic plant divination ceremonies the ingestion of plant concoctions or preparations is usually combined with the rhythm method: the chants and songs of the mushroom curanderas and the ayahuasqueros have a soft, but persistent rhythm, and may be accompanied by the rattling of branches of dried leaves; and the ceremonies with peyote and iboga involve prolonged and vigorous drumming as well. The plant substances provide an amplification of perception, and the rhythmic auditory entrainment provides the sense of traveling through (inner) space. The Asiatic shamans say the beat of the drum is the hoof-beat of the spirit horse they are riding on their journey.

In modern societies, the successors to the shamans of indigenous peoples are the psychiatrists and psychotherapists, who seek to unravel the tangled skeins of dysfunctional mind-body patterns and integrate them into a more harmonious, less painful wholeness. The psychiatric anamnesis (“un-forgetting”) is exactly analogous to the shamanic soul retrieval, and the divinatory re-membering. The broken connections of one’s past history to one’s present condition are recalled and recollected, and can then be integrated and made whole again. Painful, traumatic or confusing experiences tend to freeze or distort the normal processing of our experience.

Though the use of entheogenic plants, fungi or psychedelic substances can amplify perception of the core question-and-answer process in divination or psychotherapy, it is not essential to it; and it does have some drawbacks, chief among them being that intensified awareness of somatic responses to the drug can make concentration more difficult, especially for an inexperienced person. Even the experienced shamans in South America, for example, will use low intensity psychoactive substances (such as tobacco) or dosages when they are dealing with particularly difficult diagnostic questions. When psychoactive drugs are used to amplify the psychotherapy process, the use of low-intensity graduated dosages, the “psycholytic” approach, is preferable to the high-dose “psychedelic” paradigm – with the probable exception of the treatment of alcohol or drug addiction, where the high dose intense experience may provide longer-lasting relief from relentless cravings and withdrawal sensations.

For contemporary seekers in the psychedelic sub-culture, the exclusive reliance on drugs when doing inner exploration (i.e. “tripping”) has the further liability of confusing the answers one receives in response to divination questions with a pharmacological drug effect. “I took this drug (or plant, or mushroom) and had this vision” is a typical account, which tends to overlook or minimize the crucial role of set (intention, question) and setting (context) in determining the contents of one’s experience.

Besides the two methods of divination we have discussed so far – the use of a non-rational symbol system and entering into an altered state of consciousness – there are some other methods that have been used traditionally to enhance perception of non-ordinary or hidden aspects of the past, present or future. Gazing into a crystal ball, also called scrying, is one of the traditional practices of focusing clairvoyant perception. Erroneously assumed to be limited to prophesying the future, the practice and the term refers to perception of normally hidden aspects of reality, past, present or future, i.e. divination.

Carlos Castaneda, in his writings on the teachings of the Yaqui Indian sorcerer Don Juan, lists a number of other practices to develop what he calls seeing (i.e. non-ordinary, clairvoyant perception). He stated that different individuals on the sorcerer’s path of learning to enhance their seeing ability might specialize in one or another of these natural phenomena for their concentrated gazing: fog or mist, clouds, smoke, rain, rock faces, stars, fire or streaming water. Gazing into fire is also the divinatory perception practice in Native American Church peyote ceremonies, which are held in a teepee, sitting around a fire. And gazing into streams or pools of water was a clairvoyance practice widespread in the classical period.

We can see that in all the different methods of divination, whether they involve an intuitive symbol system or an induced state of amplified perception, the core of the process is the posing of a question and the receiving of an answer. The questioner or seeker is the personal ego-self, in search of healing or guidance. The diagnostic or visionary insight is received from a source (wise self, intuition) or a being (deity, power animal, spirit guide) with access to higher, spiritual perspectives or hidden forms of knowledge. This source, is either mediated or channeled by another human being, called the diviner (or medium, psychic, teacher, sage); or it is accessed directly through a structured, intuitive inquiry process. In all cases a framework of appropriate set and setting, or intention and context, is essential to the effectiveness and usefulness of the outcome.