Cosmic Idyllic Paradisic Euphoric

To Give Pleasure is the Greatest Pleasure

‘To Paint is to Love Again’
‘She began to talk of her experiences in roaming about the
world. When she talked about her wanderings, she seemed
to paint them: everything she described remained in my
head like finished canvases by a master. We began by
talking about China and the Chinese language which she
had begun to study. Soon we were in North Africa, in the
desert among peoples I had never heard of before. And then
suddenly she was all alone, walking beside a river and the
light was intense and I was following her as best I could in
the blinding sun, but she got lost and I found myself
wandering about in a strange land listening to a language
I had never heard before. She is an artist of some sort
because nobody has ever given me as she did the ambiance
of a world of light such as I had never dreamed of
and never hoped to see’
Arrangement: ‘The Colossus of Maroussi’ Henry Miller.
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‘An entheogen is a class of psychoactive substances that induce any type of spiritual experience aimed at development.[2] The term entheogen is often chosen to contrast recreational use of the same drugs.
The religious, shamanic, or spiritual significance of entheogens is well established in anthropological and modern contexts; entheogens have traditionally been used to supplement many diverse practices geared towards achieving transcendence, including white and black magic, sensory deprivation, divinatory, meditation, yoga, prayer, trance, rituals,
chanting, hymns like peyote songs, and drumming. In the 1960s the hippie movement escalated its use to psychedelic art, binaural beats, sensory deprivation tanks, music, and rave parties.
*
The adjective entheos translates to English as ‘full of the god, inspired, possessed’ and is the root of the English word ‘enthusiasm’ The Greeks used it as a term of praise for poets and other artists. Genesthai means ‘to come into being’ Thus, an entheogen is a drug that causes one to become inspired or to experience feelings of inspiration, often in a religious or ‘spiritual’ manner.[3]
Entheogen was coined as a replacement for the terms hallucinogen and psychedelic. Hallucinogen was popularized by Aldous Huxley's experiences with mescaline, which were published as The Doors of Perception in 1954. Psychedelic, in contrast, is a Greek neologism for ‘mind manifest’, and was coined by psychiatrist Humphry Osmond; Huxley was a volunteer in experiments Osmond was conducting on mescaline.
Ruck et al. argued that the term hallucinogen was inappropriate owing to its etymological relationship to words relating to delirium and insanity. The term psychedelic was also seen as problematic, owing to the similarity in sound to words pertaining to psychosis and also due to the fact that it had become irreversibly associated with various connotations of 1960s pop culture. In modern usage entheogen may be used synonymously with these terms, or it may be chosen to contrast with recreational use of the same drugs. The meanings of the term entheogen were formally defined by Ruck et al. In a strict sense, only those vision-producing drugs that can be shown to have figured in shamanic or religious rites would be designated entheogens, but in a looser sense, the term could also be applied to other drugs, both natural and artificial, that induce alterations of consciousness similar to those documented for ritual ingestion of traditional entheogens. Ruck et al, Journal of Psychedelic Drugs[4]]
Entheogens have been used in various ways, e.g., as part of established religious rituals, as aids for personal spiritual development (‘plant teachers’),[43][44] as recreational drugs, and for medical and therapeutic use. The use of entheogens in human cultures is nearly ubiquitous throughout recorded history.