technique for altering consciousness—serving to radically disrupt both cultural and
physiological habits.
The transformation of appearance through elaborate and beautiful ceremonial
costume or cosmetic modifications also occurs in all three rituals. Practices such as
beautification, fulfilling or releasing obligations, confession and prayer exert a strong
influence on ‘set’—the mood and expectation factors that can impact on an
individual’s experience of entheogenic ritual. Many dance-party participants pay a
great deal of attention to their appearance, and some don highly elaborate and
beautiful costumes. Examples that I have observed at doofs include a Halloween
witch costume; a rainbow-coloured, plumed headdress and a long white robe;
Chaplinesque garb; bizarre, electronic, bleeping glove puppets; leonine prosthetic
tails; and other childlike, colourful and interesting costumes composed of furry,
shiny, luminescent or metallic-looking materials. For those who make use of
psychoactive substances at dance parties, ritual preparations may commence some
time before the actual dance party with a pilgrimage to procure taboo sacraments
such as LSD or MDMA through informal and esoteric systems of exchange.
Ritual space and timeRitual space is established in all three rituals. In the case of the Huichol, all of
Wirikúta is sacred space, the point of cosmic origin. The campfire provides a further
sacred centre within this space, while the orbits of circling candles outline a sacred
perimeter (Schaefer 1996). The Barasana ritual takes place in any of several large
malocas. These communal houses are also modelled on the form of the sacred
cosmos (Hugh-Jones 1979; Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971, 1975). The space is prepared
for ritual by clearing the central area for dancing and by lighting special resin
torches which emit intense red light (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1975; Schultes and Raffauf
1992). The Bwiti rituals take place in and around chapels replete with esoteric
meanings. The centre of the chapel is a pillar which serves as axis mundi,
conceptualized as linking the living and the dead, above and below, in an enduring
relationship (Fernandez 1982). The chapel also has a female and a male side, the
setting up of polarities being an important preliminary to their synthesis—the Bwiti
‘one-heartedness’. The Bwiti chapel also represents an androgynous cruciform
human figure (ibid.).
A further similarity between these rituals is their overnight duration and
nocturnal setting. While the Huichol pilgrimage is lengthy, the actual time spent in
the intense, visionary world of Wirikúta is relatively brief. The climax of the
pilgrimage is a night-long ritual of music, circumambulation and meditation. The
Barasana yajé session lasts a single night, as does the Metsogo Bwiti ritual described
by Fernandez. There is perhaps an endeavour here to preserve the integrity of routine
patterns by temporally locating the majority of the ritual in the depths of night,
beyond the regular realm of waking consciousness. In each instance the rituals
transport the participants through the undifferentiated amorphousness of night to
emerge eventually into the pristine splendour of a new day. Here, the cosmic order
ENTHEOGENIC DANCE ECSTASIS 133