Effects - Mescaline and Form Constants, color and geometry

[Lobsang]

You know many years ago SWIm's first experience with psychedelics was with very good mescaline. This was mescaline extracted from peyote. SWIM took a very large dose and that was a mistake. One of the things that struck SWIM about this experience was that it was so visual and colorful. It was very very different than mushroom or LSD. It was the most highly intense electric lightshow that SWIM has ever had.

SWIM was always facinated by the patterns he experienced on the journey. Spirals of light and tunnels that had irradecent angular multicolor prismatic structures along them. Very as SWIM says different than any other experience. So SWIM has always known that mescaline activated some optical centers that other thins did not. Well anyway he now finds out that these things are "form constants". The following put a lot together for SWIM after many years.

The key hallucinogenic alkaloid in the San Pedro cactus is mescaline. Mescaline is unique among drugs in that its main action is a stimulant of the visual and visuo-psychic areas of the cortex (Kluver, 65). This lets the brain experience an altered state of consciousness. Mescaline is also found in many other cacti and succulents, including the well known Peyote cactus.

The largest part of the mescaline experience is experienced visually, through hallucinations. Most hallucinatory phenomena are usually variations of certain forms. These form constants are:
1. a) grating, lattice, fretwork, filigree, honeycomb, or chessboard;
2. b) cobweb;
3. c) tunnel, funnel, alley, cone or vessel;
4. d) spiral.

The fineness of the lines is often stressed. They are so thin that it is hard to say whether they are black or white. These form constants are also seen in other altered states. One observer has seen the same hallucinatory constants during four different childhood sicknesses. This has led him to conclude, "All the geometric forms and designs characteristic of mescaline-induced phenomena can, under proper conditions, be entopically observed" (Kluver, 65). Some of the form constants are also found in, "the visual phenomena of insulin hypoglycemia, and in phenomena induced by simply looking at disks with black, white, or colored sectors rotating at certain speeds" (Kluver, 65). These hallucinatory forms have also been reported from migraine attacks.

One author tries to account for the different form constants by referring to the various structures in the eye. He concludes from anatomical and observed data that,"the rods and foveal cones can look backwards and that the retinal pigment and the choriocapillary circulation can, therefore, be seen under certain conditions" (Kluver, 65). In essence, our hallucinations are views of looking backward at the retina, according to this theory. This would explain the prevalence of lines in mescaline hallucinations. Mescaline intoxication is a complicated and somewhat incomprehensible thing.

These accounts are taken from experiments done with Peyote in the 1920's. I am using these accounts on the assumption that the psychedelic mescaline experience will be fairly uniform, regardless of the plant used. It is important to understand that no written account can adequately describe the experience. The form constants experienced with mescaline intoxication overlap into the sensory sphere of experience.

A Professor Forster felt a net-like "cobweb" on his tongue. Another subject felt that his legs were spirals. For him, the spiral of his leg blended with another spiral that was rotating in the visual field. "One has the sensation of somatic and optic unity" (Kluver, 71). Lines are one of the most prevalent things seen while under the influence of mescaline. This is often seen as a "lattice" or "fretwork. A physician, Dr. Beringer was conducting an experiment involving mescaline. One of his subjects stated that:
He saw fretwork before his eyes, his arms, hands, and fingers turned into fretwork and that he became identical with the fretwork. There was no difference between the fretwork and himself, between inside and outside. All objects in the room and the walls changed into fretwork and thus became identical with him.

While writing, the words turned into fretwork and there was, therefore, an identity of fretwork and handwriting. 'The fretwork is I.' In other people the "lattice", or "fretwork" became so dominant that it appeared to dominate the whole personality. All ideas turned into glass fretwork, which he saw, thought ,and felt. He also felt, saw, tasted, and smelled tones that became fretwork. He himself was the tone (Kluver, 72). Weir Mitchell took an extract of one and one half Peyote buttons and he eventually saw: A white spear of grey stone grew up to huge height, and became a tall, richly furnished Gothic tower of very elaborate and definite design, with many rather worn statues standing in the doorways or on stone brackets.

As I gazed every projecting angle, cornice, and even the face of the stones at their joinings were by degrees covered or hung with clusters of what seemed to be huge precious stones, but uncut. These were green, purple, red, and orange; never clear yellow and never blue. All seemed to possess interior light, and to give the faintest idea of the perfectly satisfying intensity and purity of these gorgeous colors is quite beyond my power. As I looked, and it lasted long, the tower became of a fine mouse hue, and everywhere the vast pendant masses of emerald green, ruby red, and orange began to drip a slow rain of colors. Here were miles of rippled purple, half transparent and of ineffable beauty. Now and then soft golden clouds floated from these folds (Kluver, 16). This quote is from someone who had been injected with .2 gm of the sulfate of mescaline by physicians:

A steel veil the meshes of which are constantly changing in size and form...beads in different colors...red, brownish, and violet threads running together in center...gold rain falling vertically... regular and irregular forms in iridescent colors resembling shells and sea urchins... transparent oriental rugs, but infinitely small...wallpaper designs...countless rugs with such magnificent hues and such singular brilliancy that I cannot even imagine them now...cobweb like figures or concentric circles and squares...the pyramid of the tower of a Gothic dome... architectural forms, buttresses, rosettes, leafwork, fretwork, and circular patterns...modern cubistic patterns...gammadia forms from the points of which radiate innumerable lines in the forms of screws and spirals, in flashes and calm curves, a kaleidoscopic play of ornaments, patterns, crystals and prisms which creates the impression of a never-ending uniformity...hexagonal small honeycombs hung down from the ceiling...incessant play of filigreed colors... in the face of B I saw a lattice of yellow-greenish horizontal stripes (Kluver, 17).