High Culture: Drugs, Mysticism, and the Pursuit of Transcendence in the Modern World by Christopher Partridge (review)

High Culture is a meticulously researched, engagingly written history of the use of “drugs”—psychoactive plants, their extracts, and their synthetic analogues—in the pursuit of spiritual transcendence. These enterprises range from the opioid reveries of nineteenth-century romantics to the insights of present-day psychedelic visionaries and scholarly advocates for entheogen-generated unitive experiences.

Partridge provides brief discussions of ancient mystery religions, the premodern use of psychoactive plants, and modern-day shamans from indigenous cultures; however, High Culture focuses overwhelmingly on western thinkers and writers. Readers will not learn much about cannabis use by Shaivite sadhus or the Rastafari, but Partridge’s coverage of the drug explorations of notable luminaries in the literary, artistic, and elite “high culture” of the West is outstanding.

In many ways, the book presents an informal who’s who of the western intellectual and artistic avant garde of the last two centuries. Partridge explores and documents the ways that psychoactive drug use has inspired major literary, artistic, and spiritual movements. The obvious figures—from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey, and their peers, through William James, Sigmund Freud, Aldous Huxley, Huston Smith, Alan Watts, Timothy Leary, Carlos Castaneda, and ending with Terence McKenna—are all covered, which is to be expected. But who knew that both Theodore Dreiser and Katherine Mansfield were introduced to peyote by Aleister Crowley? Readers soon realize that psychoactive plants and pharmaceuticals have provided the impetus, insights, and hidden foundations underlying a great deal of recent cultural innovation.

Scholars of alternative religions will already be familiar with most of the groups and individuals covered in the book, but they should still expect new insights from even a cursory reading. Among other things, readers will quickly realize that Orientalist fantasies of the mystic East were, and still are, fundamental to the construction and interpretation of normative psychedelic experiences. These normative experiences have then led to widespread popular fascination with essentialist interpretations of Asian religious traditions. Partridge’s balanced, nonjudgmental narrative is especially effective when revealing the role played by psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, and LSD in the spread of modern day perennialism.

Partridge has done an excellent job of research, as his fascinating text and voluminous endnotes demonstrate. His careful prose and good-natured analysis contribute to the book’s authoritative feel. High Culture merits serious reading by scholars of religion, who may well judge it indispensable. Students and general readers will also find it illuminating and engaging. It is a book you can read cover-to-cover or just open at random to browse. Either way, you will be instructed, stimulated, and entertained.