Psychedelia

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For other uses, see Psychedelic.
Cadillac Ranch, an example of psychedelic art
Liquid oil projection using a powerful lamp has been used to project swirling colours onto screens since the 1960s
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Psychedelia usually refers to a

Indian music elements such as the sitar, tabla,[1] electronic effects, sound effects and reverb, and elaborate studio effects, such as playing tapes backwards or panning the music from one side to another.[2]

A

psychonauts
.

Etymology

computer-generated image
of psychedelic artwork

The term was first coined as a noun in 1956 by

Richard Schultes but championed by American psychologist Timothy Leary.[6]

Seeking a name for the experience induced by

LSD, Osmond contacted Aldous Huxley
, a personal acquaintance and advocate for the therapeutic use of the substance. Huxley coined the term "phanerothyme," from the Greek terms for "manifest" (φανερός) and "spirit" (θύμος). In a letter to Osmond, he wrote:

To make this mundane world sublime,

Take half a gram of phanerothyme

To which Osmond responded:

To fathom Hell or soar angelic,
Just take a pinch of psychedelic[7]

It was on this term that Osmond eventually settled, because it was "clear, euphonious and uncontaminated by other associations."

Danny Staples, Jonathan Ott, and R. Gordon Wasson proposed the term "entheogen" to describe the religious or spiritual experience produced by such substances.[10]

History

From the second half of the 1950s,

Lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD, or "acid" (at the time a legal drug), began to be used in the US and UK as an experimental treatment, initially promoted as a potential cure for mental illness.[13] In the early 1960s the use of LSD and other hallucinogens was advocated by proponents of the new "consciousness expansion", such as Timothy Leary, Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley and Arthur Koestler,[14][15] their writings profoundly influenced the thinking of the new generation of youth.[16] There had long been a culture of drug use among jazz and blues musicians, and use of drugs (including cannabis, peyote, mescaline and LSD[17]) had begun to grow among folk and rock musicians, who also began to include drug references in their songs.[18][nb 1]

By the mid-1960s, the psychedelic life-style had already developed in California, and an entire subculture developed. This was particularly true in San Francisco, due in part to the first major underground LSD factory, established there by Owsley Stanley.[20] There was also an emerging music scene of folk clubs, coffee houses and independent radio stations catering to a population of students at nearby Berkeley, and to free thinkers that had gravitated to the city.[21] From 1964, the Merry Pranksters, a loose group that developed around novelist Ken Kesey, sponsored the Acid Tests, a series of events based around the taking of LSD (supplied by Stanley), accompanied by light shows, film projection and discordant, improvised music known as the psychedelic symphony.[22][23] The Pranksters helped popularize LSD use through their road trips across America in a psychedelically decorated school bus, which involved distributing the drug and meeting with major figures of the beat movement, and through publications about their activities such as Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968).[24]

Leary was a well-known proponent of the use of psychedelics, as was Aldous Huxley. However, both advanced widely different opinions on the broad use of psychedelics by state and civil society. Leary promulgated the idea of such substances as a panacea, while Huxley suggested that only the cultural and intellectual elite should partake of entheogens systematically.[citation needed]

In the 1960s the use of psychedelic drugs became widespread in modern Western culture, particularly in the United States and Britain. The movement is credited to Michael Hollingshead who arrived in America from London in 1965. He was sent to the U.S. by other members of the psychedelic movement to get their ideas exposure.[25] The Summer of Love of 1967 and the resultant popularization of the hippie culture to the mainstream popularized psychedelia in the minds of popular culture, where it remained dominant through the 1970s.[26]

Modern usage

retro
example of psychedelia; the dancer combines 1960s fashion with modern LED lighting.

The impact of psychedelic drugs on western culture in the 1960s led to

psychotomimetic", the term "entheogen" was proposed and is seeing increasing use. However, many consider the term "entheogen" best reserved for religious and spiritual usage, such as certain Native American churches do with the peyote sacrament, and "psychedelic" left to describe those who are using these drugs for recreation, psychotherapy, physical healing, or creative problem solving. In science, hallucinogen remains the standard term.[27]

Visual art

Main article: Psychedelic art
Replica of Eric Clapton's "The Fool", a guitar design which became symbolic of the psychedelic era

Advances in printing and photographic technology in the 1960s saw the traditional

drawings, illustrations
, and other forms of graphic design.

The

The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane
. Many of these works are now regarded as classics of the poster genre, and original items by these artists command high prices on the collector market today.

Contemporary with the burgeoning San Francisco scene, a smaller but equally creative psychedelic art movement emerged in London, led by expatriate Australian pop artist

Oz magazine, as well as the famous album covers for the Cream albums Disraeli Gears and Wheels of Fire.[29] Other prominent London practitioners of the style included: design duo Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, whose work included numerous famous posters, as well as psychedelic "makeovers" on a piano for Paul McCartney and a car for doomed Guinness heir Tara Browne, and design collective The Fool, who created clothes and album art for several leading UK bands including The Beatles, Cream, and The Move. The Beatles loved psychedelic designs on their albums, and designer group called The Fool created psychedelic design, art, paint at the short-lived Apple Boutique (1967–1968) in Baker St, London.[30]

Joplin's Porsche 356C in "Summer of Love – Art of the Psychedelic Era" at the Whitney Museum in New York City

Blues rock singer Janis Joplin had a psychedelic car, a Porsche 356. The trend also extended to motor vehicles. The earliest, and perhaps most famous of all psychedelic vehicles was the famous "

The Merry Pranksters, which was painted inside and out in 1964 with bold psychedelic designs (although these were executed in primary colours, since the DayGlo colours that soon became de rigueur were then not widely available). Another very famous example is John Lennon's psychedelic Rolls-Royce – originally black, he had it repainted in 1967 in a vivid psychedelic gypsy caravan style, prompting bandmate George Harrison to have his Mini Cooper
similarly repainted with logos and devices that reflected his burgeoning interest in Indian spirituality.

Music

Main article: Psychedelic music

The fashion for psychedelic drugs gave its name to the style of psychedelia, a term describing a category of

drones of Indian music
.

One of the first uses of the word in the music scene of this time was in the 1964 recording of "

13th Floor Elevators 1966 album The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators.[32] Psychedelia truly took off in 1967 with the Summer of Love and, although associated with San Francisco, the style soon spread across the US, and worldwide.[33]

The

rave culture
; these movements, however, were distinct from and mostly unrelated to 1960s psychedelia.

Festivals

Psychedelic Festival in Brazil

A psychedelic festival is a gathering that promotes psychedelic music and art in an effort to unite participants in a communal psychedelic experience.[34] Psychedelic festivals have been described as "temporary communities reproduced via personal and collective acts of transgression... through the routine expenditure of excess energy, and through self-sacrifice in acts of abandonment involving ecstatic dancing often fueled by chemical cocktails."[34] These festivals often emphasize the ideals of peace, love, unity, and respect.[34] Notable psychedelic festivals include the biennial Boom Festival in Portugal,[34] Ozora Festival in Hungary, Universo Paralello in Brazil as well as Nevada's Burning Man[35] and California's Symbiosis Gathering in the United States.[36]

Conferences

In recent years there has been a resurgence in interest in psychedelic research and a growing number of conferences now take place across the globe.[37] The psychedelic research charity Breaking Convention have hosted one of the world's largest since 2011. A biennial conference in London, UK, Breaking Convention: a multidisciplinary conference on psychedelic consciousness[38] is a multidisciplinary conference on psychedelic consciousness. In the US MAPS held their first Psychedelic Science conference,[39] devoted specifically to research of psychedelics in scientific and medical fields, in 2013. In Australia, Entheogenesis Australis has been hosting the world's longest ongoing conferences around psychedelics and ethnobotany since 2004.[40]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ New York folk musician Peter Stampfel claimed to be the first to use the word "psychedelic" in a song lyric (The Holy Modal Rounders' version of "Hesitation Blues", 1963).[19]

References

  1. OCLC 173511775.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link
    )
  2. OCLC 38504347.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link
    )
  3. ^ Nicholas Murray, Aldous Huxley: A Biography, 419.
  4. ^ Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition, September 2007, s.v., Etymology
  5. ^ A. Weil, W. Rosen. (1993), From Chocolate To Morphine: Everything You Need To Know About Mind-Altering Drugs. New York, Houghton Mifflin Company. p. 93
  6. ^ W. Davis (1996), "One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest". New York, Simon and Schuster, Inc. p. 120.
  7. PMC 381240
    .
  8. ^ Martin, Douglas (February 22, 2004). "Humphry Osmond, 86, Who Sought Medicinal Value in Psychedelic Drugs, Dies". The New York Times. p. 1001025.
  9. ^ W. Davis (1996), One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest. New York, Simon & Schuster, Inc. p. 120.
  10. Carl A.P. Ruck
    , The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries (North Atlantic Books, 2008), pgs. 138–139
  11. ISBN 0-520-23033-7
    .
  12. ISBN 0-7614-4234-0
    , p. 30.
  13. ISBN 0-415-93040-5
    , p. 21.
  14. The Huffington Post
    , 26 January 2010.
  15. ^ "Out-Of-Sight! SMiLE Timeline". Archived from the original on 1 February 2010. Retrieved 30 October 2011.
  16. ISBN 0-226-85458-2
    , p. 437.
  17. ISBN 0-520-05193-9
    , p. 166.
  18. ISBN 0-8264-6321-5
    , p. 211.
  19. ^ DeRogatis 2003, p. 8.
  20. ^ DeRogatis 2003, pp. 8–9.
  21. ISBN 0-87930-743-9
    , pp. 11–13.
  22. ^ Gilliland, John (1969). "Show 41 – The Acid Test: Psychedelics and a sub-culture emerge in San Francisco. [Part 1] : UNT Digital Library" (audio). Pop Chronicles. Digital.library.unt.edu. Retrieved 6 May 2011.
  23. ^ Hicks 2000, p. 60.
  24. ISBN 1-84755-909-3
    , p. 87.
  25. ^ Wilson, Andrew (2007). "Spontaneous Underground: An Introduction to Psychedelic Scenes, 1965–1968". In Christopher Grunenberg, Jonathan Harris (ed.). Summer of Love: Psychedelic Art, Social Crisis and Counterculture in the 1960s (8 ed.). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. pp. 63–98.
  26. ^ "The Summer of Love was more than hippies and LSD – it was the start of modern individualism". The Conversation. July 6, 2017. Retrieved September 27, 2019.
  27. ^ "Drugs World". Informationisbeautiful.net. Retrieved September 27, 2019.
  28. ^ Mark Deming. "Big Brother & the Holding Company: Sex, Dope & Cheap Thrills". AllMusic. Retrieved 10 March 2022.
  29. S2CID 149680436
    .
  30. ^ "Beatles APPLE BOUTIQUE". Archived from the original on 2006-08-18. Retrieved 2019-11-14.
  31. ISBN 0-495-50530-7
    , pp. 212–3.
  32. ^
    ISBN 0-252-06915-3
    , pp. 59–60.
  33. ISBN 0-87930-653-X
    , pp. 1322–3.
  34. ^ a b c d St John, Graham. "Neotrance and the Psychedelic Festival." Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture, 1(1) (2009).
  35. ^ Griffith, Martin. "Psychedelic Festival to Attract 24,000 Fans", The Albany Herald, September 1, 2001. Accessed on July 22, 2011 from Google News Archive.
  36. ISSN 1947-5403
    .
  37. PMID 21051213
    .
  38. ^ Aman, Jacob. (July 9, 2015) "Breaking Convention: A Multidisciplinary Conference on Psychedelic Consciousness", Breaking Convention 2015 Retrieved 2019-09-27.
  39. ^ "Psychedelic Science", Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies: MAPS Retrieved 2019-09-27.
  40. ^ "History of Entheogenesis Australis". Entheogenesis Australis (EGA).

External links

Look up psychedelic in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Look up psychedelia in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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