It is often said that writing is an imperfect art when it comes to expressing the extraordinary visual and sensual altered states brought about by taking a trip with psychedelics. This is not for want of trying, however; reams of words have been produced in attempts to tackle this very task. From the experimental to the technical, writing has at best narrativized the psychedelic experience, and rarely touches upon its phenomenology in a way that empathetically communicates its sense of weird.
Music and the visual arts on the other hand have been lauded as methods by which psychedelic aesthetics, at least the flavour of said aesthetics, might establish the kind of sensual connection that begins to approximate what a tripper has undergone. While obviously still not a perfect representation, these artforms share the ability of psychedelics to play more directly upon the human visionary experience, and thereby communicate something nuanced.
None of these aesthetics, however, are immune from culture. They don’t exist in a vacuum untouched by the beliefs, pretensions, and psychology of the individual and society from which they manifest—which is as true for the experience itself as for its aesthetic. What’s more, psychedelic aesthetics are not only trying to represent an extraordinary experience, they are also cultural and sub-cultural signals, tied in with group communication, technology and the manifestation of taste.
As a result, a question of history, of time and place and kind, emerges from any enquiry into these aesthetics. According to historian Erika Dyck, author of the fabulous Psychedelics: A Visual Odyssey (2024), context is key to understanding the dynamics of using psychedelics. In the book, she tracks ‘how representations of psychedelics have revealed power dynamics in the way that psychedelics have been rendered visible, and by whom.’ A framework accompanied here by a feast of imagery.
Dyck’s story stretches from suggestions about mushroom use in ancient Egyptian culture (as interpreted in frieze artwork), Hindu traditions related to Shiva, Mesoamerican mushrooms, and peyote use among indigenous populations in North America, to psychedelic patterns of the present day. Also, perhaps oddly, there’s a short section on ergotism in medieval Europe—something more associated with gangrene and seizures. Nevertheless, it places the psychedelic aesthetic within a global and historical context.
The term ‘psychedelic’ itself is also taken in its broadest sense of ‘mind-manifesting’, and thus this visual odyssey includes some imagery of Victorian patent medicines that contained opiates and cocaine; ‘Mrs Winslow’s Soothing Syrup’ and ‘Cocaine Toothache Drops’ for instance. These are juxtaposed by Dyck with European exploration and colonialism abroad, and the emergence of Western models of classification in regard to botany and pharmaceuticals.
Following this first quarter of the book, Dyck then goes into ‘psychedelic’ in its more historically-contingent meaning as a particular twentieth century discourse—using ethnobotanist Richard Evans Shultes and others’ explorations as passages into psychedelia in the post-war world (via some dips into absinthe, hashish, and, oddly, Modern Spiritualism). In ‘Huxley’s Legacy’, it is a treat to see the paper, dug out from the archives, scrawled by Huxley on his deathbed asking for LSD.
From this point on we are treated to images of classic book and vinyl covers, war protests, Kesey Acid Test imagery, hippie trail photos, blotter and of course the famous poster art of the era—arguably the quintessential aesthetic associated with psychedelia. There are also several pages dedicated to anti-drug propaganda, a particularly fascinating section which is a reminder, for this reviewer at least, of how they were repurposed by the drug underground as posters in the 1990s.
In many respects, Psychedelic is an archetypal coffee-table book. There is a deep nostalgia factor in the images, which is slightly unsettling so far as I was certainly not alive when the majority of these images, artefacts and photos were created. It is, I would suggest, a sign that they have come to be key signifiers in the spectacle of twentieth century culture. Dyck’s commentary is necessarily piecemeal, but does give the popular context to further appreciate the visual culture the book depicts.
In the introduction, she asks, ‘How can a plant be illegal? How can a mushroom be subject to regulations beyond the laws of nature? Can a toad become a target of prohibition?’ The answer is of course, they can’t. This is not how the legal system works. It is only illegal for a person to import, export, possess, manufacturer or distribute any said plant or chemical. The power dynamics of psychedelics, like their aesthetics, exist in a context, a framework, we have already conjured—and it remains very human.
At the conclusion, Dyck suggests that rushing psychedelics into current medical and economic frameworks risks ‘squandering’ their potential. To this, I would add, the prevalent and often homogenous modes of cultural thinking that exist in the mainstream too—whether in media, academia, or beyond. However, there is something, especially in the smile of Neal Cassady in one photo, that reassures me that an elusive psychedelic aesthetic remains—one transcending frameworks.
Our latest publication, by our reviewer today, Cobweb of Trips: A Literary History of Psychedelics by Dr Robert Dickins, is out now!