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The Peyote Cult
For half a century, readers on peyotism have devoured La Barre’s fascinating original study, which began when the author, at age twenty-four, studied the rites of fifteen American Indian tribes using Lophophora williamsii, the small, spineless, carrot-shaped peyote cactus growing in the Rio Grande Valley and southward.
Continuing his research from the 1930s through the 1980s, Weston La Barre reviews topics such as the Timothy Leary-Richard Alpert “experiments” with peyote and other psychotropic substances, the Carlos Castaneda phenomenon, the progress of the Native American Church toward acceptance as a religious denomination, the presumptions of the Neo-American Church, the legal ramifications of ritual drug use, and the spread of peyotism from the Southwest to other North American tribes.
This new edition of La Barre’s classic study includes 334 new entries in the latest of his highly valued bibliographical essays on works relating to peyote, not just in anthropology but in a variety of fields including archeology, economics, botany, chemistry, and pharmacology. The bibliography lists important contributions in popular media such as newspapers, audiotapes, and films, as well as in scholarly journals.
Continuing his research from the 1930s through the 1980s, Weston La Barre reviews topics such as the Timothy Leary-Richard Alpert “experiments” with peyote and other psychotropic substances, the Carlos Castaneda phenomenon, the progress of the Native American Church toward acceptance as a religious denomination, the presumptions of the Neo-American Church, the legal ramifications of ritual drug use, and the spread of peyotism from the Southwest to other North American tribes.
This new edition of La Barre’s classic study includes 334 new entries in the latest of his highly valued bibliographical essays on works relating to peyote, not just in anthropology but in a variety of fields including archeology, economics, botany, chemistry, and pharmacology. The bibliography lists important contributions in popular media such as newspapers, audiotapes, and films, as well as in scholarly journals.
356 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1989
About the author
Weston La Barre
43 books18 followersWeston La Barre is best known for his work in anthropology and ethnography, in which he drew on the theories of psychoanalysis and psychiatry. Born in Uniontown, PA, La Barre studied at Princeton and Yale, and later taught at Rutgers, Wisconsin and Duke universities. La Barre conducted field work across North and South America, and later through India, China, Africa and Europe. He studied the Plains Indians and their peyote cult with Richard Evans Schultes (which resulted in the 1938 book The Peyote Cult).
La Barre's masterwork is The Ghost Dance: The Origin of Religion (1970), which draws together his explorations of shamanism, world religion, Native American culture, altered states of consciousness and the use of drugs in belief systems.
Works:
The Peyote Cult
The Aymara Indians of the Lake Titicaca Plateau
The Human Animal
Materia Medica of the Aymara
They Shall Take up Serpents: Psychology of the Southern Snakehandling Cult
Shadow of Childhood: Neoteny and the Biology of Religion
The Ghost Dance: The Origins of Religion
Culture in Context, Selected Writings of Weston La Barre
Muelos: A Stone Age Superstition About Sexuality
La Barre's masterwork is The Ghost Dance: The Origin of Religion (1970), which draws together his explorations of shamanism, world religion, Native American culture, altered states of consciousness and the use of drugs in belief systems.
Works:
The Peyote Cult
The Aymara Indians of the Lake Titicaca Plateau
The Human Animal
Materia Medica of the Aymara
They Shall Take up Serpents: Psychology of the Southern Snakehandling Cult
Shadow of Childhood: Neoteny and the Biology of Religion
The Ghost Dance: The Origins of Religion
Culture in Context, Selected Writings of Weston La Barre
Muelos: A Stone Age Superstition About Sexuality
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 13, 2015
It is hard to give this book anything but a five-star rating. It is a1937 Doctoral Dissertation from Yale University which means that it is based on properly supervised field work and that the author has a thorough understanding of the Ethnographic literature on Totemic religion in general and on Peyotism in particular. What the reader gets is a solid, academic work that is quite dull. Given the popular mythology about Peyotism however this book is well worth the read.
LaBarre informs the reader that Peyotism existed in Mexico in the Pre-Columbian era. Under the Spanish rule it not only survived but flourished. In some areas it remained essentially pre-Columbian in nature. In other areas in merged syncretically with Christianity. In the late nineteenth century, Peyotism began a period of rapid expansion. It was broadly accepted by tribes in the American SouthWest and then moved northwards penetrating even into Canada.
Anthropologist or Ethnographers have documented the existence of Ecstatic religions in Totemic societies throughout the world. Whereas most of these religions use chanting, dancing and singing in their meetings to induce ecstatic states in their practitioners, the Peyotists add the hallucinogenic properties of the Peyote cactus to the mixture. The result is behaviour that is if anything relatively sedate by the standards of religions meetings in Totemic societies. Peyote is not addictive and its use in no ways impairs the user's ability to function normally in society. LaBarre finds Peyotism to be quite unobjectionable as a religion. Like all religions in Totemic societies, it fulfills the valuable role of creating a sense of solidarity amongst the community members.
While profoundly sympathetic to the Native American Peyotists, the writers and theoreticians of the psychedelic movement put LaBarre into a purple fury. In essays outside of his dissertation proper, LaBarre vents his spleen against Carlos Castaneda, Timothy Leary and other exponents of hallucinogenic drugs who achieved great public visibility during the 1960s. In his view the writers of the hip and beat generations were falsely incorporating peyotism into their movement in a dishonest attempt to give themselves legitimacy. I am quite sympathetic to LaBarre in this regard and found his non-academic rants against the beat and hippy writers to be enormously entertaining although far removed from the general thrust of his book.
Weston LaBarre has written a superb work of ethnography on a Totemic religion that is still thriving. Its great value for most readers is its debunking of the myths that the Flower Power generation created about Peyote.
LaBarre informs the reader that Peyotism existed in Mexico in the Pre-Columbian era. Under the Spanish rule it not only survived but flourished. In some areas it remained essentially pre-Columbian in nature. In other areas in merged syncretically with Christianity. In the late nineteenth century, Peyotism began a period of rapid expansion. It was broadly accepted by tribes in the American SouthWest and then moved northwards penetrating even into Canada.
Anthropologist or Ethnographers have documented the existence of Ecstatic religions in Totemic societies throughout the world. Whereas most of these religions use chanting, dancing and singing in their meetings to induce ecstatic states in their practitioners, the Peyotists add the hallucinogenic properties of the Peyote cactus to the mixture. The result is behaviour that is if anything relatively sedate by the standards of religions meetings in Totemic societies. Peyote is not addictive and its use in no ways impairs the user's ability to function normally in society. LaBarre finds Peyotism to be quite unobjectionable as a religion. Like all religions in Totemic societies, it fulfills the valuable role of creating a sense of solidarity amongst the community members.
While profoundly sympathetic to the Native American Peyotists, the writers and theoreticians of the psychedelic movement put LaBarre into a purple fury. In essays outside of his dissertation proper, LaBarre vents his spleen against Carlos Castaneda, Timothy Leary and other exponents of hallucinogenic drugs who achieved great public visibility during the 1960s. In his view the writers of the hip and beat generations were falsely incorporating peyotism into their movement in a dishonest attempt to give themselves legitimacy. I am quite sympathetic to LaBarre in this regard and found his non-academic rants against the beat and hippy writers to be enormously entertaining although far removed from the general thrust of his book.
Weston LaBarre has written a superb work of ethnography on a Totemic religion that is still thriving. Its great value for most readers is its debunking of the myths that the Flower Power generation created about Peyote.
December 5, 2012
Weston La Barre's "The Peyote Cult" remains one of the enduring classics of ethnography, tracing the character, evolution and diffusion of peyote use from its origins in the horizons of Aztec, Huichol and Tarahumari culture south of the Rio Grande to its spread into Mescalero Apache culture, and its subsequent widespread diffusion through the plains cultures and beyond in the late nineteenth cenutry.
This book is a dry read, consisting, as it does, of La Barre's unpolished dissertation, written in the 1930s and based on the ethnographic research he conducted while traveling with the great ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes.
It was written for specialists and is organized into analytical topics with little regard for narrative flow. Its ideal audience will certainly be persons who are interested in both Native American history and the use of visionary plants; readers who are solely interested in the latter topic will probably find this a bewildering read, and may be put off by La Barre's periodic polemics against the use of psychedelic substances by non-aboriginals, which he regarded with contempt.
"The Peyote Cult" contains some truly rich and beautiful illustrations of sacramental and secular uses of peyote, though I would have appreciated a mythological supplement. La Barre refers several times to varoius peyote origin myths, but never summarizes or explains them. Nonetheless, some of the visions and ceremonies he records are evocative and haunting.
The book's reconstruction of the diffusion of peyote use is a crucial contribution to the field and provids an essential reference point for understanding its history, and especially for distinguishing between those cultures which are relatively untouched by exogenous influences and those that are highly syncretic. The Huichol represent for La Barre a probable preservation of pre-Columbian peyote rites that are almost untouched by Christian or European influences, while most plains varieties of practices are syncretic to a greater or lesser extent, some employing Christian imagery and symbolism, and many reflecting the pan-Indian ethos that was exploding across the hemisphere just at the time of peyote's diffusion. The various links between peytoe cults and the formation of a pan-Indian identity make for fascinating study, and are tied to some of the core events of the time, such as the Ghost Dance messianic movement.
La Barre's analsis does not always add up for me. In one chapter, for example, he explains that the use of peyote is always a sacred act for the Native American, while in another, he lists what he calls "secular uses of peyote," including preparation for battle, an aid for long travel, and its use by Aztects to pacify sacrificial victims.
His use of the category "cult" is also somewhat unclear. He refers several times to "peyote cults" or "the peyote cult" (note the book's title), while also agreeing with another author's assessment that peyote never constitutes what we could properly term a "cult," as it lacks an initiatory structure and secret socieites.
No doubt these inconsistancies derive from the imprecision of these cateogries, and from the great complexity of the subject matter. Still, I would have preferred if he chose one working definition for terms like "cult" and "secular" and stuck with them; or better yet, he could have avoided such terms altogether. How does one distinguish, for example, between a curing ceremeony and a "religious" ceremony? Does a vision ceremony intended to find a missing item constitute a "religious" event? Such questions are merely semantic.
Despite these minor objections, La Barre's book is highly rewarding for any reader interested in such matters.
This book is a dry read, consisting, as it does, of La Barre's unpolished dissertation, written in the 1930s and based on the ethnographic research he conducted while traveling with the great ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes.
It was written for specialists and is organized into analytical topics with little regard for narrative flow. Its ideal audience will certainly be persons who are interested in both Native American history and the use of visionary plants; readers who are solely interested in the latter topic will probably find this a bewildering read, and may be put off by La Barre's periodic polemics against the use of psychedelic substances by non-aboriginals, which he regarded with contempt.
"The Peyote Cult" contains some truly rich and beautiful illustrations of sacramental and secular uses of peyote, though I would have appreciated a mythological supplement. La Barre refers several times to varoius peyote origin myths, but never summarizes or explains them. Nonetheless, some of the visions and ceremonies he records are evocative and haunting.
The book's reconstruction of the diffusion of peyote use is a crucial contribution to the field and provids an essential reference point for understanding its history, and especially for distinguishing between those cultures which are relatively untouched by exogenous influences and those that are highly syncretic. The Huichol represent for La Barre a probable preservation of pre-Columbian peyote rites that are almost untouched by Christian or European influences, while most plains varieties of practices are syncretic to a greater or lesser extent, some employing Christian imagery and symbolism, and many reflecting the pan-Indian ethos that was exploding across the hemisphere just at the time of peyote's diffusion. The various links between peytoe cults and the formation of a pan-Indian identity make for fascinating study, and are tied to some of the core events of the time, such as the Ghost Dance messianic movement.
La Barre's analsis does not always add up for me. In one chapter, for example, he explains that the use of peyote is always a sacred act for the Native American, while in another, he lists what he calls "secular uses of peyote," including preparation for battle, an aid for long travel, and its use by Aztects to pacify sacrificial victims.
His use of the category "cult" is also somewhat unclear. He refers several times to "peyote cults" or "the peyote cult" (note the book's title), while also agreeing with another author's assessment that peyote never constitutes what we could properly term a "cult," as it lacks an initiatory structure and secret socieites.
No doubt these inconsistancies derive from the imprecision of these cateogries, and from the great complexity of the subject matter. Still, I would have preferred if he chose one working definition for terms like "cult" and "secular" and stuck with them; or better yet, he could have avoided such terms altogether. How does one distinguish, for example, between a curing ceremeony and a "religious" ceremony? Does a vision ceremony intended to find a missing item constitute a "religious" event? Such questions are merely semantic.
Despite these minor objections, La Barre's book is highly rewarding for any reader interested in such matters.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews