High culture : drugs, mysticism, and the pursuit of transcendence in the modern world / / Christopher Partridge [[electronic resource]]

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910793139003321
• Autore: Partridge Christopher H (Christopher Hugh), <1961->
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: New York, NY : , : Oxford University Press, , 2018
• ISBN: 0-19-045913-1; 0-19-045914-X
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource
• Disciplina: 154.4
• Soggetti: Hallucinogenic drugs; Hallucinogenic drugs - Therapeutic use; Transcendence (Philosophy)
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Previously issued in print: 2018.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Nota di contenuto: 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 -- Concluding Comments -- 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 -- Concluding Comments -- 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 -- Concluding Comments -- 6. The Antipodes of the Mind -- Psychedelic Research: Some Background Notes -- A Mystic and a Scientist -- Mysticism, Sacred, and Profane -- Concluding Comments -- 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 -- Concluding Comments -- Notes -- Index.
• Sommario/riassunto: 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.