Nomad Codes

occasionally, by the name of “Now.” The Prankster’s tomfoolery and systematic evasion of deep meanings were productive attempts to keep the Now fresh, to keep the scene close to the source.
    Giving voice to the same hunch that Larry Harvey expressed above, Wolfe speculates that all the great religions begin, not with some conceptual or philosophical breakthrough, but with “an overwhelming new experience .” [8] This gnostic flash radiates through the concrete lives of a small circle of folks, generally hanging around a charismatic leader who seems to have plugged into the hidden sources of life. To his credit, Kesey more or less dodged such a messianic role. As the “non-navigator,” he interacted with his crew obliquely or through cryptic slogans: “See with your ears and hear with your eyes,” “You’re either on the bus or off the bus.” In his role as Mr. Burning Man, Larry Harvey has played an even more humble hand, at least in terms of his quietly intelligent public persona. Though the “inner circle” of Burning Man has its own sectarian qualities, Harvey and crew are betting on an even more democratic model of participation than the Acid Tests: if you get anywhere near the bus, if you even see the damn thing glittering in the distance, then you’re going to hop on.
    One of the reasons so many have hopped on is that, before Burning Man is an art festival or a ritual of radical self-expression, it is a party—an uncorked hoodoo bash. Burning Man organizers ask participants to abide by the same laws that apply in the “real world,” yet many disregard this directive. Indeed, indulgence in intoxicants is seen by many to be fundamental to the event’s celebratory, neo-anarchist ethics. Though serious overdoses and sociopathic levels of drunkenness are relatively rare, the feral aspect of such voluptuary behavior should not be denied—I vividly recall one snarling female teen who thrust a grubby hand in my face, demanding that I sell her whatever Ecstasy she presumed, without cause, that I was packing. Nonetheless, despite the idiocy and thuggery they can inspire, intoxicants cannot be separated from the sacred potential of consciousness itself. In other words, once one acknowledges the transformative effects of cognitive ecstasy, then drugs are not far behind. Bacchus is a god of wine, Shiva the lord of bhang , and Siberian shamans aficionados of Amanita muscaria . In its most primary form, religious transcendence may be indistinguishable from psychoactive release.
    Fundamentally, Burning Man’s cult of intoxicants is a cult of pleasure, with MDMA rivaling alcohol as one of the most popular substances on the playa. Nonetheless, the more turbulent and mind-bending psychedelics remain a supreme sacrament in this particular cult, and they are pleasurable only in a qualified sense of the term. Psychedelics, or entheogens (as they are called when emphasizing their spiritual potential), amplify and transform perceptual processes, jacking consciousness out of its usual ruts and increasing the capacity for wonder and the weird. At higher doses, they seem to catalyze awesome experiences of cosmic fusion, revelation, synchronicity, and demonic paranoia that often seem impossible to process without invoking sacred frameworks, however provisionally.
    Today, the question of psychoactive spirituality remains tied up with the problem of authenticity (see “The Paisley Gate” for more discussion of this theme). Shamanic societies the world over grew out of and maintain relationships with “plant teachers” in the context of deeply nuanced and relatively homogeneous world views. Modern consumers, on the other hand, are basically flying blind, whatever their self-styled shamanic beliefs. Despite the mystic insights and magical paradigms they may unveil, entheogens are also, for us, secular and modern: commodity molecules that rather dependably tune the nervous system to particular channels in the spectrum of consciousness. From this perspective, we might say that entheogens can produce something like spiritual or visionary experience. We can look at them as reality-modelers with powerful special effects but weak claims on truth. By thereby bracketing the “truth” of the experience, entheogens may paradoxically move spirit beyond the bugaboo of authenticity.
    Such strange loops proliferate at the Burn, which few will be shocked to hear represents the bleeding edge of contemporary American psychedelic