At least as far back as the Eleusinian Mysteries, which counted notables such as Plato and Pythagoras among its members, ecstatic culture has often been spread by an educated elite. In Europe, we saw this with the Rabelaisians25 of the sixteenth century, and the Club de Hashish in the eighteenth century—both of whom explored altered states, open sexuality, and libertine philosophies in pursuit of inspiration. In the 1920’s socialite Mabel Dodge Luhan’s Taos home26 served as a mescaline-fueled salon for everyone from D. H. Lawrence to Georgia O’Keeffe and Carl Jung. In the
