The Doors of perception
Author: Aldous Huxley
Intro:
The Doors of Perception is a philosophical essay, released as a book, by Aldous Huxley. First published in 1954, it details his experiences when taking mescaline.
The book takes the form of Huxley's recollection of a mescaline trip that took place over the course of an afternoon in May 1953.
The book takes its title from a phrase in William Blake's 1793 poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Huxley recalls the insights he experienced, which range from the "purely aesthetic" to "sacramental vision". He also incorporates later reflections on the experience and its meaning for art and religion.
Mescaline is the principal agent of the psychedelic cactus peyote and San Pedro cactus, which has been used in Native American religious ceremonies for thousands of years. A German pharmacologist, Arthur Heffter, isolated the alkaloids in the peyote cactus in 1891. These included mescaline, which he showed through a combination of animal and self-experiments was the compound responsible for the psychoactive properties of the plant. In 1919, Ernst Späth, another German chemist, synthesised the drug.
Although personal accounts of taking the cactus had been written by psychologists such as Weir Mitchell in the US and Havelock Ellis in the UK during the 1890s, the German-American Heinrich Kluver was the first to systematically study its psychological effects in a small book called Mescal and Mechanisms of Hallucinations published in 1928. The book stated that the drug could be used to research the unconscious mind.
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Author: Aldous Huxley
Intro:
The Doors of Perception is a philosophical essay, released as a book, by Aldous Huxley. First published in 1954, it details his experiences when taking mescaline.
The book takes the form of Huxley's recollection of a mescaline trip that took place over the course of an afternoon in May 1953.
The book takes its title from a phrase in William Blake's 1793 poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Huxley recalls the insights he experienced, which range from the "purely aesthetic" to "sacramental vision". He also incorporates later reflections on the experience and its meaning for art and religion.
Mescaline is the principal agent of the psychedelic cactus peyote and San Pedro cactus, which has been used in Native American religious ceremonies for thousands of years. A German pharmacologist, Arthur Heffter, isolated the alkaloids in the peyote cactus in 1891. These included mescaline, which he showed through a combination of animal and self-experiments was the compound responsible for the psychoactive properties of the plant. In 1919, Ernst Späth, another German chemist, synthesised the drug.
Although personal accounts of taking the cactus had been written by psychologists such as Weir Mitchell in the US and Havelock Ellis in the UK during the 1890s, the German-American Heinrich Kluver was the first to systematically study its psychological effects in a small book called Mescal and Mechanisms of Hallucinations published in 1928. The book stated that the drug could be used to research the unconscious mind.
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