how this archive is curated
about
carnivorous carnival is an ethnomycology archive of insights gained through the psilocybin mushroom experience.
this archive motleys personal essays, the work of other writers, and other media that helped me wrap my head around the themes of the psilocybin experience—i hope it can do the same for the reader.
insights came from during and after the trip experience.
foraging, organizing, and sensemaking the materials presented in this archive has played a big role in my integration process.
foraging, organizing, and sensemaking the materials presented in this archive has played a big role in my integration process.
the reader is asked to work, connect the dots, and formulate their own understanding.
centering carnival
psilocybin mushrooms use carnival as a motif to help us deconstruct cultural illusions.
we are left questioning society, the stability of the ‘normal’, and the forces that subject us to such misperceptions.
we are left questioning society, the stability of the ‘normal’, and the forces that subject us to such misperceptions.
carnival disrupts order, inverts hierarchy, produces role reversals, and points out the underlying absurdity of our social conventions.
although carnival is not the only theme encountered through the psilocybin experience, this archive centralizes the subject of carnival because it offers an entry point into the subject. other subjects are discussed, but they all have a way of weaving together.
cultural critique
a discussion of the psilocybin experience is incomplete without social critique and analysis of culture. if anything it feels like the mushroom is pointing us toward the subtexts that go normalized and obscured in our carnivorous society.
the mushroom asks us to mimic its carnivalesque and queer performance.
it asks us to disrupt the status quo, to elevate the conversation in order to reach some kind of poetic ecstasy so that we may escape the strait-jacket we call culture.
it asks us to disrupt the status quo, to elevate the conversation in order to reach some kind of poetic ecstasy so that we may escape the strait-jacket we call culture.
