High Culture

Drugs, Mysticism, and the Pursuit of Transcendence in the Modern World

Christopher Partridge

The first analysis of the modern history of drug-induced mystical states
Explores the history of drug use as a means of achieving gnosis
Provides information on previously little-known religious figures

High Culture

Drugs, Mysticism, and the Pursuit of Transcendence in the Modern World

Christopher Partridge

Description

History is littered with evidence of humanity's fascination with drugs and the pursuit of altered states. From early Romanticism to late-nineteenth-century occultism and from fin de siècle Paris to contemporary psychedelic shamanism, psychoactive substances have playedcatalyzing people. Yet serious analysis of the religious dimensions of modern drug use is still lacking.

the use of drugs and the pursuit of transcendence from the nineteenth century to the present day. Beginning with the Romantic fascination with opium, it chronicles the discovery of anesthetics, the psychiatric and religious interest in hashish, the bewitching power of mescaline and hallucinogenic fungi, the more recent uses of LSD, as well as the debates surrounding drugs and religious experience. This fascinating and wide-ranging sociological and cultural history fills a major gap in the study of religion in the modern world and our understanding of the importance of countercultural thought, offering new and timely insights into the controversial relationship between drugs and mystical experience.

High Culture

Drugs, Mysticism, and the Pursuit of Transcendence in the Modern World

Christopher Partridge

High Culture

Drugs, Mysticism, and the Pursuit of Transcendence in the Modern World

Christopher Partridge

Author Information

Christopher Partridge is Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Politics, Philosophy, and Religion at Lancaster University, UK. His research and writing focuses on alternative spiritual currents, countercultures, and popular music.

High Culture

Drugs, Mysticism, and the Pursuit of Transcendence in the Modern World

Christopher Partridge

Reviews and Awards

"Scholars of modern religion have long tip-toed around the elephant in the room: psychoactive drugs. In High Culture, Christopher Partridge bends his ear to the beast, and hears its resplendent, daemonic roar. Critically attuned, characteristically thorough, and sharp in his sympathies, Partridge has written the most thoughtful history yet of the modern West's pharmacological mysteries."--Erik Davis, author of Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica

"I have been waiting for this book for a long time-an extensive and balanced history of psychedelic revelation, plant gnosis, and chemical-mystical experience in the modern West, all envisioned and theorized by an expert comparativist. As a discipline, we have barely begun taking the psychoactive dimensions of the history of religions (and, I dare add, of historians of religions) seriously, but this book is a very significant and very welcome development in precisely this direction."--Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions

"How have drugs engaged the human psyche throughout history? What is the social context in which they have been used and for what intellectual purposes? This wonderful book provides an in depth account of the use of mind altering drugs from shamans to hippies and clearly explains how and why they were used. It is essential reading for anybody who is even remotely interested in the topic."--Richard J. Miller, Alfred Newton Richards Professor of Pharmacology, Northwestern University