The Peyote Dance

by Antonin Artaud, Helen Weaver (Translator)

Artaud received a grant to travel to Mexico, where he met his first (Mexican) Parisian friend, the Painter Federico Cantú in 1936 when he gave lectures on the decadence of Western civilization. He also studied and lived with the Tarahumaran people and experimented with peyote, recording his experiences, which were later released in a volume called Voyage to the Land of the Tarahumara. The content of this work closely resembles the poems of his later days, concerned primarily with the supernatural. Artaud also recorded his horrific withdrawal from heroin upon entering the land of the Tarahumaras; having deserted his last supply of the drug at a mountainside, he literally had to be hoisted onto his horse, and soon resembled, in his words, "a giant, inflamed gum". Artaud would return to opiates later in life.

Genres: Philosophy, Anthropology, Drugs, Nonfiction, France, Poetry, Theory

105 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1945

About the author

French surrealist poet and playwright Antonin Artaud advocated a deliberately shocking and confrontational style of drama that he called "theater of cruelty."

People better knew Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, an essayist, actor, and director.

Considered among the most influential figures in the evolution of modern theory, Antonin Artaud associated with artists and experimental groups in Paris during the 1920s.

Political differences then resulted in him breaking and founding the theatre Alfred Jarry with Roger Vitrac and Robert Aron. Together, they expected to create a forum for works to change radically. Artaud especially expressed disdain for west of the day, panned the ordered plot and scripted language that his contemporaries typically employed to convey ideas, and recorded his ideas in such works as Le Theatre de la cruaute and The Theatre and Its Double .

Artaud thought to represent reality and to affect the much possible audience and therefore used a mixture of strange and disturbing forms of lighting, sound, and other performance elements.

Artaud wanted that the "spectacle" that "engulfed and physically affected" this audience, put in the middle. He referred to this layout like a "vortex," a "trapped and powerless" constantly shifting shape.

Reviews

[Tentatively, Convenience · Rating 4 out of 5]

Artaud. I went to a movie about Collette, an erotic author who 'studied' w/ Artaud. A woman I knew was there, She sd something like "Who was that asshole?" - referring to Artaud in a scene where he drilled "The Theater of Cruelty" into Collette. Ah, yes.. another reminder of the dominance of 'merican ignorance. Who, indeed, was "that asshole"? Uh, someone associated w/ Surrealism, an influential poet & playwright, an actor in both a movie about Joan of Arc & one about Napoleon - y'know? Not quite yr ordinary guy. A guy who visited the Tarahumara Indians in Mexico in 1936 to participate in their Peyote rituals. I've taken peyote. It's an important thing to do. ONE THINKS LIKE A PLANT under its influence. I put down roots. Artaud was an explorer of outer fringes of human consciousness. He probably wasn't the easiest guy to get along w/. But he was THERE when the rest of the idiotic bourgeois world was NOWHERESVILLE. On the back of this bk it's called "Anthropology" - that's true enuf. I call it "Philosophy" here. That's true enuf too. Like so much that I'm interested in, it's not so easy to say its one thing or another. Artaud was alive, at his own risk. Beyond that.. who's to say?!

[Oğuz Kayra · Rating 5 out of 5]

«Meksika'nın kuzeyinde, Meksiko'dan kırk sekiz saat uzaklıkta, saf bir Kızılderili ırk var: Tarahumaralar. Kırk bin kişi orada sanki tufandan önceki vaziyette yaşıyorlar. Birçok ilerlemeden bahsedilen bu dünyaya karşı meydan okuyorlar, çünkü ilerleme karşısında umutsuzluğa düşüldüğü kesin.

Bütün tıp teorilerinin aksine, karlarla dolu geçit vermeyen dağlarda çıplak yaşıyorlar. Onlarda komünizm kendiliğinden varılan bir dayanışma hissi şeklinde mevcut.

Ne kadar inanılmaz görünürse görünsün, Kızılderili Tarahumaralar sanki yeni ölmüşler gibi yaşıyorlar. Gerçeği görmüyorlar ve sihirli güçlerini uygarlığa karşı sahip oldukları küçümseme hissinden alıyorlar.

Bazen yerlerinden kıpırdama arzusu ve, dediklerine göre, aldatılan insanların nasıl olduğunu görme arzusuyla kentlere iniyorlar.» — Antonin Artaud.

[Erik Graff · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had heard of Artaud and his theatre of cruelty, but had never read him, finding the surrealists, dadaists and their ilk not to my taste. A book about peyote and a traditional peyote religion, however, was a different matter. While staying with friends in Springfield, Vermont, I borrowed this book from their library, reading it on their front porch and at the local cafe.

The book is only glancingly about the Mexican peyote cult and the people who practice it. The book is more about Artaud and about what he experienced under the influence of the cactus taken up as grist for his mill. He definitely had a recognizably psychedelic experience, but the book was too idiosyncratic to promise much to readers interested in more than just another example of the phenomenology of the drug--and perhaps this essay's influence on the book and movie, 'Altered States'.

[T · Rating 4 out of 5]

Artaud, one of the first surrealist writers, coming from the Dada movement, takes a journey to Mexico to experience first hand the rites of Ciguri. The rites often use the cactus-based hallucinogen peyote. His ideas go from anthropological to philosophical to just plain weird as he debates whether these are the Atlantians Plato spoke of.

This is an essential read for those wanting to catch up on early drug history, being one of the first written accounts of peyote usage.

I was disappointed that he didn't describe his experience with the peyote more, it was much more about the tribe and their beliefs surrounding the use of the cactus button. Still a fun read for those interested in stepping outside the norm, and experiencing (third hand?) the rituals involved in these sacred rites. His prose is among the best I've read from the surrealists (at least in translation) and I look forward to more of his works.

Three day trip... wow.

[Dylan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Guess I was looking for that same vital piercing style that makes up a majority of the City Light's Artaud Anthology, which there's glimpses of here but overall the tone is much different and he's very obsessed with Jesus and God at one point, of course in a different context but unlike his other work. Best part is when he defends the peyote ritual of the Tarahumara against the governmental forces attempting to restrict it.
"The trouble is that when they have taken Peyote, they no longer obey us."
They are abusing it in order to reach that point of disorderly intoxication in which the soul is no longer subject to anything.
One can draw magical powers from the contempt they have for civilization.

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Max (a fellow Goodreads) brought this book to my attention. I never had a copy and it's very difficult to find even via the Internet - but I read a library edition some years ago and it is a really remarkable travel journal. Artaud is one-of-a-kind-genius.

[Aslı Can]

Tanıdığım Antonin Artaud'dan farklıydı bu kitaptaki. Yine çok coşkulu ama farklı bi şekilde.

Kitabının basılması için yayıncıyı ikna etmeye çalıştığı mektupları da yer alıyor kitapta, üzücü oldu benim için okumak.

[no · Rating 2 out of 5]

Half the time, this feels like a genuinely fascinating, poetic attempt to capture something transcendent. The other half? It’s just a French guy having an extremely dramatic reaction to taking drugs in the desert.

Artaud clearly wants to understand the Indigenous rituals he’s witnessing, but there’s still that classic ‘outsider looking in’ energy that makes parts of this feel… off. Like, bro, maybe this isn’t about you? Just a thought.

That said, the writing does slap in moments—there are passages that feel like fever dreams in the best way.

Final verdict: weird, beautiful, and mildly exhausting

[Álvaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

muy loco todo

[Jun Kang · Rating 5 out of 5]

This work is of Artaud’s journey to Mexico where he joins the Tarahumara people in their rituals with the psychedelic drug, peyote. There are elaborate rituals, costumes, and people dance all night and it is a feast for the senses. The psychedelic experiences are described in what can only be called literary. After his experiences, he writes of the Tarahumara:

"There is," he said, "in every man an ancient reflection of God in which we can still contemplate the image of that infinite force which one day flung us into a soul and this soul into a body, and it is to the image of this Force that Peyote has led us because Ciguri calls us back to him."

He goes further and lays out a brief sketch of his assertion that Christianity in the West had become spiritually exhausted and that non-Western ritual cultures preserved a primordial relation between the body and the natural world. The peyote dance enacts a bodily truth of an alignment with the Absolute that Christianity intimates but ultimately deviates from the mark.

They know that every step forward, every convenience acquired through the mastery of a purely physical civilisation, also implies a loss, a regression.

Real traditions do not progress, since they represent the most advanced stage of every truth. The only progress that can be made consists in preserving the form and the force of these traditions. Down through the centuries, the Tarahumara have been able to learn how to preserve their virility.

[Cobertizo · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Fue una mañana de domingo cuando el anciano jefe indio me abrió la conciencia con una cuchillada entre el corazón y el bazo: «Tenga confianza», me dijo, «no tenga miedo, que no le haré ningún daño», y se apresuró a retroceder tres o cuatro pasos y, tras hacer que su espada describiese un círculo en el aire por el pomo y hacia atrás, se precipitó sobre mí, apuntándome y con toda su fuerza, como si quisiera exterminarme, pero la punta de la espada apenas me tocó la piel y sólo brotó una gotita de sangre.
— No noté dolor alguno, pero sí que tuve la impresión de despertar a algo respecto de lo cual hasta entonces había yo sido un mal nacido y estaba mal orientado, y me sentí colmado por una luz que nunca había poseído. — Pasaron algunos días y una mañana, al amanecer, entré en relación con los sacerdotes del Tutuguri y, dos días después, pude por fin unirme al Ciguri."

[Temucano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Allá por 1936 Antonin Artaud se adentró en el país de los tarahumaras, consumiendo mescalina a raudales, buscando las raíces del lenguaje, de la existencia. De este viaje surgieron estos escritos, mezcla de la mística visionaria de Blake con la mordacidad de Lautreamont, alucinaciones en ritos indígenas, complementadas con la locura propia del autor, que no es poca. Es una prosa desbocada, simbólica, densa, que cuando terminas el libro, no sabes si realmente lo has hecho, si es que de verdad se puede terminar un libro así.

Ahora que lo tomé de vuelta, varios años después, puedo dar fe de ello.

[Rodrigo · Rating 5 out of 5]

La experiencia mágica y mística que tuvo Antonin Artaud al visitar a los tarahumaras y participar en la ceremonia del peyote. Él estaba convencido que había encontrado una civilización descendiente de la Atlántida descrita por Platón, e igualmente encuentra paralelismos entre los símbolos utilizados por los tarahumaras en sus ropas con los símbolos esotéricos occidentales utilizados por el rosacrucismo y el cristianismo esotérico. Las descripciones que hace de sus experiencias, tanto "celestiales" como "infernales" recuerdan el ascenso y descenso del mago en su camino a la autodeificación, tal como lo describen algunas doctrinas ocultistas.

[Daniel Alvarez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Antonin Artaud se adentró tres meses en la sierra con el único fin de entender todoa la cosmogonía de los Tarahumaras. En este libro desde mi opinión es una mezcla del pensamiento que tuvo Artaud en ese contacto con los Tarahumara, asi como breves explicaciones de los ritos que ellos realizaban(La Danza del Peyote)

[Camila Darrigrandi · Rating 4 out of 5]

La primera parte, está bien, donde relata sus experiencias con los tarahumara y el peyote. Luego la mayoría de las cartas que dirije a sus amigos relacionadas a lo anterior, me entusiasmaron poco. De todas formas, cuentas seguir el delirio con que escribe.

[J. J. Rendon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Que el post-scriptum después del primer capítulo fuera:
“Escribo esto después de 7 años en el manicomio con 150 o 200 hostias en el estomago”

Durísimo hermano, se pone malviajante al final pero es entendible.

[Andrés Eichmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Primer libro que agarró de Artaud, y quedó fascinado.
La racionalización en torno al texto es inútil.
El lector tendrá que experimentar su lírica.

Ciguri...

[Aaron Schuschu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was not expecting the Atlantis bit, but I probably should have

[Jordan Van Der Low · Rating 5 out of 5]

flipé en colores incandescentes. Los Tarahumara es uno de mis libros favoritos de la vida y luego de volver a tomarlo, en efecto, lo tengo plagado de lapiz mina. Se me hizo excitante la mirada en drogas de Artaud sobre una civilización que para él significó conocer la verdad autentica del origen de la naturaleza y la humanidad. Uno de los fragmentos que me gustaron a propósito de la inducción al Peyote:

Digo bien: transportado al otro lado de las cosas y como si una fuerza terrible te hubiese concedido la gracia de verte restituido a lo que existe en el otro lado. Uno deja de sentir el cuerpo, al que acaba de acaba de abandonar y que le daba seguridad con sus limites, en cambio, se siente mucho más feliz de pertenecer a lo ilimitado, el Infinito, y que uno va a verlo.

Aquí como en El pesanervios o Las cartas de Rodez, Artaud se esmera por encauzar su vida hacia una experiencia desvestida de todo atavío del mundo. Sabiendo de esta imposibilidad, se sumergió en las drogas como vehículo hacia una visión incorpórea e iluminada. En su escritura vive al pie de la letra este socavón de energía, y se lee con la misma locura que la impregna. bkknisimo

[Matthew Ford · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recall the first half of this book as highly thought provoking and lucid. It has a few slow bits but overall the information Artaud presents feels invaluable. Highly recommended if the topic interests you.

[M · Rating 5 out of 5]

ahir la Neus Dalmau i Corominas explicava la relació d'aquest Artaud amb Verdaguer i el viatge iniciàtic els exorcismes... cal rellegir lo també

[Barış Şehri · Rating 1 out of 5]

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