High culture : drugs, mysticism, and the pursuit of transcendence in the modern world / Christopher Partridge.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Partridge, Christopher H. (Christopher Hugh), 1961- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Hallucinogenic drugs.

Hallucinogenic drugs--Therapeutic use.

Transcendence (Philosophy).

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2018.

Summary:

Humans have always been fascinated by drugs and altered states. Despite the risk of addiction, many have used drugs as technologies to induce moments of meaning-making transcendence. Beginning at the close of the eighteenth century, this work traces the quest for transcendence and meaning through drugs in the West through the modern period.

Contents:

Cover

High Culture

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Technologies of Transcendence

Technologies of the Self

Psychedelic Gnosis and the Transcendence of Ordinary Consciousness

Perennialism and the Experience of Oneness

Shamanism and Ekstasis

Concluding Analysis: The Drug Problem?

2. Opium Dreams

Opium in Britain in the Early Nineteenth Century: Some Background Notes

The Art of Dreaming

The English Opium-​Eater

Opium and the Orient: Fear and Fascination

Concluding Comments

3. Anesthetic Revelation

A Ladder to the Heaven of Heavens

Syntax, Surgery, and Celestial Visions

Benjamin Blood's Anesthetic Revelation

Anesthesia and the Society for Psychical Research

4. Hashishdom

Cannabis and Clinical Research in the Nineteenth Century

The Old Man of the Mountain and the Assassins

Artificial Paradises

The American Hashish-​Eater

5. Occultism in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

Mesmerism, Hashish, and Somnambulism

Dowameskh, the Orient, and Neoplatonic Esotericism

Abstinence and Ambivalence

Theosophical Reflection

Discourses of Decadence

W.B. Yeats, Maud Gonne, Drugs, and Fin de Siècle Occultism

The Highs and Lows of a Drug Fiend

A Note on Drugs and Post-​Crowleyan Thelemic Thought

6. The Antipodes of the Mind

Psychedelic Research: Some Background Notes

A Mystic and a Scientist

Mysticism, Sacred, and Profane

7. Revolution in the Head

Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness

A Religious Set and Setting

Notes on the Counterculture

Millbrook and Psychedelic Religion

The Neo-​American Church

The Psychedelic Sacrament

Turning On and Turning East

Concluding Comments.

8. Psychedelic Shamanism

Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy

The Long Trip and the Origin of Religion

The Sorcerer's Apprentice?

Alien Dreamtime

Notes

Index.

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 2018.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from home page (viewed on April 18, 2018).

ISBN:

0-19-045913-1

0-19-045914-X

OCLC:

1035256965