Unveiling Alien Landscapes: Parallel Worlds of Psychedelics and Tabletop Roleplaying Games in the Face of Late-Stage Capitalism
“We are surrounded by oceans of alien beauty, alien intent, bizarre ideas…”
-Terence Mckenna
Tabletop Roleplaying games are like psychedelics, only slightly more focused. Let’s dive headfirst into the Mckenna wave and explore the similarities and differences concerning these two concepts to understand why traveling within oneself, no matter the medium, is incredibly important for human development.
Let’s start with the history of why psychedelics were stigmatized. Thanks to the War on Drugs, initiated by President Nixon and then expanded by George HW Bush and Clinton mass incarcerations with racial biases were conducted for decades. This War on Drugs worked in concert with the Satanic Panic which targeted fringe culture genres like punk rock, heavy metal, Tabletop roleplaying games, and horror films. Although, the Satanic Panic was responsible for fewer unjust incarcerations the penalties were far more severe.
Looking back at the satanic panic of the ’80s and ’90s and placing it in parallel with the War on Drugs that was being conducted I see a devastating period where avenues of dissolving societal barriers and traveling the interdimensional multiverse that exists in all of us were opposed with brutal and misguided reactions based in fear. Many individuals were imprisoned for non-violent “drug crimes” and some were even wrongfully imprisoned and lost decades of their lives in confinement after being accused of performing profane Satanic Rituals.
I was born in 1987 and I have only vague impressions of what that time was like. Trying to make sense of this conflict between, what I interpret as spiritual liberty and widespread thought control through mass media, I can’t help but look back into human history to identify the societal pattern. Since we’re attempting to swim in the Mckenna wave let’s try this one on for size:
“The archaic revival is this overarching metaphor that is the way for us to go to save our necks at this point. When a culture gets into trouble instinctively what it does is it goes back through its own past, until it finds a moment where things seem to make sense. And then it brings that moment forward into the present.”
-Terrence Mckenna
What I’ve found is that the conflict between spiritual liberty and mass thought control through media, speech, and writing has been occurring since the dawn of empires. For example, in the 4th century, Emperor Theodosius I of Rome declared Christianity the official state religion of the Roman Empire and began actively suppressing pagan beliefs and practices. The use of missionaries and pressuring government leaders to enforce this policy allowed for the suppression to spread outside of the Empire’s capital and beyond Rome’s borders.
A similar process was undertaken in the Middle East during the 7th century through Islamic conquests by Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates. Prior to that Christian influence in the Middle East had already paved the way for the decline of a wide array of pagan practices and the rise of Islam merely finished the job.
The Hebrew bible encourages the destruction of idolatrous symbols and encourages the devout worship of the one true god Yahweh. Even all the way back in 715 BCE King Ezekias, the King of Judah is believed to have ordered the destruction of idols and temples to centralize worship on the one true god.
Why are these examples from human history important? To understand what is happening so that we may get an idea of what comes next in our modern world we must look back on history and identify the patterns. Empires are in the business of suppressing fringe beliefs.
In an empire, the responsibility of the average citizen is to further the aspirations of the empire, either through labor, planning, warfighting, and so on. To the imperial citizen, the empire is a grand monolith ruled by a god-like figure. The empire wants the citizen to feel as if they are protected by the grand social construct, thus the citizen works to maintain it.
If a citizen of an empire begins exploring the vast interdimensional multiverse that flows through all of us, they will realize how small the empire really is in comparison to the rest of the cosmos. Additionally, if the imperial citizen undertakes enough spiritual growth that citizen may grow into their own personal power and realize that they don’t need the empire to live freely and happily. Of course, this is the empire’s worst fear. If enough citizens achieve spiritual independence and personal power it could spread like a virus through the population which could lead to the redistribution of power, which is consolidated to one supreme position, or worse the collapse of the empire.
The social elite of the United States in the 80’s and 90’s was terrified of this outcome. How could their corporations and organizations continue to function without the hard-working citizens who kept them running? The emergence of all these counter-culture mediums for the youth of the nation to explore themselves and come into their own personal power within this shared experience was a threat to the established hierarchy. So, these wealthy influential individuals used mass media to divert attention away from these fringe mediums of self-exploration to, ironically, false idols.
The false idols had already been destroyed by the Abrahamic religions. Besides, to attempt to bring back the pagan powers as a mode of distraction and thought control would be counter-productive to corporate motivations considering the pagan powers promote liberty and self-sufficiency. I suspect that the use of false idols through the employment of people such as actors, celebrities, and so on had been occurring for decades prior to the War on Drugs and the Satanic Panic. However, it wasn’t until the 1960s and the explosion of anti-war, feminism, racial equality and LGBTQ rights movements that the social elite experienced any form of resistance that was capable of bringing forth change.
An exceptional example of how the culture war was waged in the 80s was the Japanese media coverage of crop circles found in the countryside near London. It is reported that the number of Japanese reporters covering the crop circle phenomenon was disproportionate to even the English reporters covering the story. Let’s swim a little deeper into the Mckenna wave and think about how this quote relates to the Satanic Panic and the War on Drugs.
“METI which is the Ministry of Trade and Industry is obviously carrying on a clandestine project in the study of semiotics, in the study of the Western mind and how it relates to the manipulation of certain symbols because they are in charge of marketing and advertising, and creating a marketing psychology in Japan. So, what I think we’re dealing with here is a ultra clandestine team of ninja stem snappers who pose as Japanese tourists and television crews and so forth and then at a drop of a hat can flash into this stem snapping mode, create these things and the press it generates and the discussion provides a very deep index into the English mind.”
It is important to note that the Satanic Panic and the War on Drugs were only two aspects of a larger phenomenon occurring throughout Western culture at the time. I suspect that the emergence of these fringe counterculture movements and mediums of self-exploration were byproducts of the initial awakening of the masses. In post-World War II America, the few who were born into the elite social class or were able to rise into said class experienced little resistance from the working class. However, the working class was becoming hip to the ancient game of empires which instigated an escalating culture war. As the masses sought greater personal liberty the showrunners were scrambling to learn how to produce mass media that could keep the human mind distracted and subdued.
My conclusion is that the stigmatization of psychedelics, punk rock, TTRPGs, and other fringe cultures was a response by the nation’s elite to a cultural war that continues to rage today.
With the history out of the way let’s look at the parallels between psychedelics and tabletop roleplaying games. Having experienced both concepts, I can interpret both experiences as methods of travel. There is a place to go. There is a place behind what we experience in our day-to-day lives that may be brought to the forefront of our consciousness if we can focus and keep an open mind. Like a psychedelic hallucination, a game of Dungeons and Dragons can become a shared hallucination where the most bizarre combinations of events can occur. If the whole party is riding the same wave, then the bizarre events can produce just as powerful emotional responses as some intense psychedelic trips.
What psychedelics and TTRPGs have in common is that they are both methods of removing the mask of societal conditioning. However, the method of consuming psychedelics is rather forceful, on the contrary TTRPGs allow the individual to ease into the mind of a humanoid owl who is making deals with devils so that he may attain access to a starship that will transport him to a realm of tentacled monstrosities. If that isn’t psychedelic, I don’t know what is. After an hour, if you’re really into it you feel as if you are the humanoid owl. TTRPGs are an amazing medium for anyone to feel as if they are something other than human. Just in the same way as many of those who have taken LSD or psilocybin and have reported feelings of greater empathy for and connection with humanity, TTRPGs allow anyone to experience a life other than their own which in turn promotes greater empathy.
The Dungeons and Dragons campaign is a trip. Everyone at the table agrees that together, we are all going to leave this place and go somewhere else. We admit to each other that we have the power within ourselves to travel, to see a glimpse of what lies beyond this thing we all seem to be doing here. That is the power of tabletop roleplaying games and it, like psychedelics, has the power to overthrow empires. Of course, this power is subtle, and it moves slowly, as it should. These concepts like TTRPGs and psychedelics are not meant to instigate anarchy through the creation of instantaneous power vacuums. TTRPGs and psychedelics are a method of gradual change and balance. They are tools that allow the human mind to seek personal power through limitless imagination, to become unbound yet bind no one. They are initiatory paths to a place of greater knowing.
Be sure to check out my high fantasy project, Moonsong’s Descent: A Journal of Infernal Origin
In Tidehaven’s Reach and Owlkin cutpurse named Lysander Moonsong struggles with making ends meet as he works tirelessly to steal enough coin to appease his Guild and feed himself. After being arrested for petty thievery Lysander turns to infernal powers to secure his freedom. Little does Lysander know that he will get far more than he bargained for.
Image of a celestial hellscape. (Image by Valua Vitaly)
Check out the first entry of this post-series!
If you’re just finding this post series check out the Moonsong’s Descent Table of Contents.
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