NAME

Dr. Des Tramacchi

BIO

Des Tramacchi has a PhD in religious studies, specialising in entheogens. His research interests include the religious uses of psychoactive substances, sociology of religions, ecstatic dance cultures, and the anthropology of consciousness.

LECTURE TITLE

‘Exciting the Spirit: Cross-cultural perspectives on the uses of stimulants as entheogens’

SYNOPSIS

The word “stimulant” is derived from the Latin stimulare: “to goad on”. Stimulation is therefore the opposite of yoga (from the Sanskrit root yuj meaning “to yoke” or “to control”) but not necessarily its mortal enemy. Psychiatrist Roland Fischer’s well-known “cartography of ecstatic and meditative states” provides a point of departure for understanding this apparent paradox. Fischer observed that altered states of consciousness arising from hyper-activation of the nervous system (such as prolonged dancing or psychostimulant drugs) share many similarities with altered states of consciousness produced by conserving energy within the nervous system (such as those produced by sensory deprivation, zazen and hatha yoga). Fischer’s most surprising clinical finding was that either extreme in altered consciousness causes a physiological rebound. Both hyperactivation and hypoactivation can similarly propel consciousness beyond its usual capacity to process the “perception-hallucination continuum” and into a state of ecstasy similar to the sam?dhi of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and the Yoga Schools.

Globally, the origins of stimulant use are frequently encoded in myth. For example, the first tea plant in China was said to have grown from the eyelids of Bodhidharma (founder of the Chan school of Buddhism) after he cut them off in order to more easily stay awake during meditation. The power of stimulants to enhance wakefulness, loquacity and endurance is used in many religious contexts. Coffee, the first records of which date to the tenth century, was initially used primarily by Sufis as an aid to meditation, prayer and dance. Tabernanthe iboga (a stimulant at low to medium doses) is used as a tool to communicate with ancestors and to increase ritual output in the ceremonies of the Bwiti and Mbiri religions of Gabon. Khat (Catha edulis), the” flower of Paradise”, is chewed in Yemen, Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya for its stimulating properties, most frequently in rituals incorporating prayer and music and designed to augment religious communion. Ephedra species are used to make the sacred stimulant beverage Hom, an important sacrament of Zoroastrianism. Many Indologists believe that the divine Soma potion of the Vedas (the historical prototype of the Iranian Hom drink) was similarly compounded from Ephedra. The Vedic god Indra was an avid drinker of Soma which restored his energy and conferred great strength in battle.

Stimulants are often a preferred food of the spirits, as well as a medium by which spirits communicate with humans. In the Yoruba culture and religion of West Africa, kola nuts are important religious offerings during prayer, ancestor veneration, naming ceremonies, weddings and funerals. Kola nuts with four lobes are also used in a system of divination called Obi. In the Andes, half a world away, coca leaves are offered to the spirits, especially Pacha Mama and the spirits of sacred places. Like kola, coca symbolises sociality and exchange between spirits and humans. Like kola, coca is a medium of communication with spirits and is used in traditional divination systems.

Despite a venerable history of religious use, the term “stimulant” conjures in the western mind tableaux of compulsive use of methamphetamine, criminal and paramilitary empires built around the trade in cocaine, or on deeper reflection, the ubiquitous cups of tea and coffee that drive the cogs of post-industrial free-market economies. In this presentation I hope to demonstrate that between the extreme and the banal forms of stimulant use, we can find a variety of legitimate, time-honoured and life-enhancing religious applications for these invigorating and mercurial substances.