Ecstasy Trance Cults & Shamanachy
By Ray Castle
Trance is a psychic state of ecstasy, the core essence of all
magico religico experiences. Celebratory rapture and drug experiences
challenge dominant culture belief systems and world view realities.
Outdoor sun rise dance parties catalysed by sound & light
create a synaesthesia reverie sensoria that transcend time, space
and consensus culture. Ecstatic altered state consciousness is
the essence of the shamanic spirit.
Dance parties, like religious experiences, are transneptunian,
in that we crave to lose ourselves in something larger than ourselves,
to fuse with universal consciousness, nature and the cosmos.
Dance parties are transpersonally empowering, but equally the
euphoria generated is commodified and codified into fashion &
hedonistic entertainment.
Group dance rituals are primordially ancient. Trance has been
used by all traditional cultures to achieve spiritual transcendental
bliss as have the use of soma (drugs), to enhance emotional receptivity
to numinous mystical experiences.
Existentially, life is challenging, living in an earthbound ‘Self’
and the challenges of a highly structured, productivity obsessed
society. Modern culture wants you to be independent, competitive,
and consumer orientated in your fulfilment drive. Deep down, there
is divine discontent, and an urge to escape duty and restriction.
Psychologically this can lead to various forms of addiction.
On an unconscious collective level, Neptune (ruler of music and
drugs) dissolves boundaries and ego defences. Losing the Self
in group hysteria, temporarily sets us free from the prison of
the separated Self. Dance puts one in a fusion state, like that
experienced in the oceanic waters of the womb. Shared communal
satori states are psychically rejuvenating and healing, but can
create chaos, as we integrate the sublime with Maya, the material
world, and the separate ego-Self.
All throughout history altered state trance practices have been
used by diverse cultures. Shamanism is pre-eminently a religious
phenomenon of Siberia and Central Asia, but the same techniques
of ecstasy occur else where in the world.
Primitive tribes, pre Christian Pagan religions, Greek Dionysus
Bacchus – The God of wine and orgiastic religion that celebrates
the power and fertility of nature using song and the drum –
Middle Eastern Sufi Dervish dancing, Celtic cults, all went into
trance states.
The Shakers, a religious sect in America, which worked themselves
up into a giddy dance state via their congregational convulsive
palpitations. Rastafarians in Jamaica, use ganja and Shiva, bom
shanka, chillum smoking circles, in India.
Western art movements (Surrealism, Dada, Situationalists) challenged
the ontology of reality paradigms in society. Music has always
been used for revolutionary social change.
Jazz, rock n roll, reggae, punk, hip hop, techno, house, gay disco,
techno, trance grew out of counter cultural movements espousing
emotional, sexual, political, spiritual, liberation from collective
mainstream attitudes.
The 60s hip priests, Timothy Leary, Ken kesey & The Merry
Pranksters detonated LSD into music culture.
Political, sociological, mythological realities were challenged.
Music and drug events fertilised social revolution with new age,
spiritual-revivalist, ideals.
Computers liberated artists from the tyranny of a corporatised
music industry and ushered in fractal frequency, quantum-quick-step,
electro-percussive grooves. Synthesised designer drugs with metronome
MDMA fuelled house/techno beats, catalysed participation in hyperspatial
cathartic dancing.
Ancient communal experiences were re-ignited. Goa style, outdoor,
ecstatic-dance-floor euphoria fanned out around the world as a
movement which followed eclipses and Moon cycles.
Trance tribal techno collectively galvanised a global, dance-
dissident, counter-culture, party movement. A nomadic traveller
network of escapees from formal society. A neo-hippy renaissance
mushroomed with gatherings around psychedelic techno parties,
cum festivals, cum camp outs, cum temporary alternative society.
The X generation born in the radical, first LSD wave, 60s, reignited
that decade’s key signature – revolutionary awakened
conscious – and infused it with technological innovation
– resulting in a kind of digital occult.
This collective resonance is a harmonic of Uranus and Pluto in
Virgo, rulers of radical, anarchistic, subversive, collective
movements, with Virgo mercurially interpolating cybertech. Neptune
(drugs, art, music, religion) was in Scorpio during the 60s, indicating
a generation seeking intense experiences on the above themes.
By the early 90s DJs/Vjs/decorators, drug dealers, party organisers,
dancers were in control of the pleasure factor ingredients at
musical events. Not stage-centric, fat rockers, promoters and
record company moguls.
A democratising of the party/entertainment ethos had brought the
control of the party spice back to the people.
The centre of the event was the dance floor.
Albeit, these days, it has gone back to stage focused, DJ on
a pedestal show, with a rock style, speaker-stack formation, either
side – resulting in the dancers facing one direction, like
a passive audience, in entertainment-mind-set mode.
A very different dynamic compared to sense-surround 4-way stacks
with DJs more anonymous, closer and lower to the dance floor.
The original Goa party format/concept/philosophy.
The first wave of psychedelic dust disco in the late 80s and
warehouse parties ushered in a hierarchal power shift.
Those controlling the spice, to turn people on, had gone from
music labels, super star artists, and ‘entertainment–event’
promoters to renegade party makers, with innovative resourcefulness,
and imagination. An ‘archaic revival’ of sorts. Boogie-down
drum machine disco house and break beats on a forest floor, beach
or warehouse.
We took the beaches of Goa to the outskirts of Amsterdam in ’88.
A bastion for pirate shamanarchists. Our party crew, and this
is prior to such events like ‘The Voov’, was called
‘Pagan Productions’. I Deejayed in a large circus
tent in the fields at Ruigoord.
The politics of dancing and drug taking, or more profoundly,
alternative religions other than Christianity, have been an anarchistic
affront to the morals and fabric of western society.
Like the Pagan cult rituals of the antecedents of Europe, including
the ancient Greek rituals of Bacchae, Maenad and Dionynsus, were
dance catharsis events in the mountains in an intoxicated state,
either physically or spiritually.
These psychodramatic ceremonies were geared to reconnect with
an intensity of passion which prudence in society had destroyed.
The ancients understood that delirious delight and celebratory
rapture liberates the imagination from everyday preoccupations.
The participants believed that they were being directed by the
Gods and spirit world in a state of trance, a form of divine madness.
A direct communion with supernatural forces, in which true insights
could be obtained.
Elements of this are evident in the Christian ‘speaking
in tongues.’ The soul leaves the body and can experience
visions in its escape from the physical boy and rational-logical
mind.
Similarly the whirling Dervish Sufi dancers of Middle Eastern
cults believed that, when they danced at their ceremonies, they
were attaining union with God.
The Shaman, akin to a priest, in Judo-Christina cultures, is
a magician, medicine man, healer, miracle-worker, mystic and poet.
Hidden hands are evoked with his song. Sacred metaphysical rituals
are performed by costumed participants while the shaman beats
his drum.
He can walk on red hot coals. Should the soul of an animal take
over his mind, he will take on the movements of that entity. His
receptive faculties are omniscient. If a ghost comes from another
tribe, he will speak in another tongue or play a different tune.
In trance, long lost memories can be discovered. Latent powers
are activated, one can gain entry into fields of consciousness
beyond 3D space, to other realities and parallel universes. These
are potent states in which the shaman, magician, medicine man
can build a bridge portal to the divine through incantations,
chants & drum beats. The soul of participants can ascend to
the sky or descend to the chthonic underworld.
Iran and central Asia have religious ecstasy traditions involving
intoxications mushrooms, as do other parts of the world. Shiva,
a mythological Hindu god of destruction and regeneration, is the
cosmic dancer, and has been an appropriated deity by the hippy
traveller dance party cult originating from Goa India.
So is the DJ performer artist a shaman ?
That depends on their agenda and intent, how they manage their
ego, and whether they understand the laws of magic in the role
of conducting the emotional opera of a dance journey, which has
many chapters and sub plots.
Also consider the philosophy and attitude of the organisers/promoters/performers/decorators/sound-engineers/chai-shop/drug
dealers.
Additionally, there are ecstasy cult codes, celebrity artist
branding and the commodification of partying, issues to consider.
Techngnosis, trance, fundamentalism versus corporate techno/house/trance
fast food beats.
And of course, musical form, identity association and functionality
attachments. Currently, from a beats/style/genre/musicology perspective,
everything has been done to death, plagiarised, recycled, sampled,
revived.
Psychedelic is relative to your state of mind and is a meta-morphing
concept. A lot of the dance music vernacular that today calls
itself ‘psychedelic’ is stiff, highly formularised,
bland and stylistically stuck.
Transformation, reinvention and innovation are the creed of shamanarchists
seeking evolving ecstatic satori experiences with archetypal mythical
themes that catalyst a magic of numinous wonderment and discovery,
beyond commerce, ego and religious fanaticism.
INSECTOID (CD) ‘GROOVOLOGY OF THE METAVERSE’ 1998 Liner
notes © Ray Castle
Insectivorous
ectomorphism of the micro macro trance tweak age. Entheogenic
beats cyborganic circadian rhythms iintergalactic gaian grooves.
A promethean quest to liberate meaning from the imprisonment
of ignorance. The future is the present liberated from the
past. Ontological organnarchy of earth mind creationists. United
space collectives which spiritualise communal shared consciousness.
Psychonavigational newsical nuances of an Aquarian age Equitek.
Mentasmic multidimensional portals of numinosity transmorgrified
thru the dream state logic of chiros, temenos. Chakric cyberdelica.
Tweakers of wholistic hallucinogenic beatfreakery usinig the
rhythmystec hip-gnosis of the digital occult. Err-rational
antipodean teknosis neurotransmitting pyrotechnical psychism
for ritual catharsis. Pot head flipping pixies in tea pot taxis,
sonic shankars, mystical maniacs, tribedelic nomads, hale boppers,
astral aliens, transneptunian escapologists, lunar critter
quark farkers. Anarchiteqnoferals and technosaureans of the
totemic meld int the anima mundi of the universal mind. An
exotic ayurvedic elixir of groovology channelled by a synergistic
congregation of creative, transpersonal alchemists. Cyber shamanic
psychotropic sorcery catalysing the cauldron of sexagesimal
silicon surf into homeopathic harmonics for the T H C trans-zen-dance
heathen cult. Meta-mutating global iinformational beings morphing
an ancient futurism. Reflecting the evolution of digital, doofadelic,
dance dharma. Ayanamsa, shunyata satori. A phantasmagoria whirly
gig samadhi propelled thru portals of time and space, metabolising
body-groove-gestalt. A digidelic aquariana where the yantric
fuses with an evolving ecology of intuitive circuitry creating
an aural oracle abstraction of sacred sonic geometry. Existential,
experiential elecktrickery awakening the kundalini rainbow
serpent. Reconnection with a lost edenic unity. Cosmic orgasmic
oceanic bliss states of the ejaculatory pangalacticspermia.
Clitorial clairsentience of the heinous groove gland group
mind. Astral ascensioin gliding on galactic gated wavelengths,
paradisiacal mythos cosmologies. A return to primordial instinctuality
thru exalted state frequency frenzies on neonic somnific flux. The mercurial magic of tribedelic trance tekno communion, hyperspatially dissolves boundaries, as it taps into the infinite oblivion of the universal web, with love & electrons.
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