Book: Ustinova. 2018. Divine Mania: Alterations of Consciousness in Ancient Greece

Ustinova’s 2018 book Divine Mania: Alteration of Consciousness in Ancient Greece is a large exercise in the ‘anything but drugs’ genre of academic books. Here is a densely researched book on ancient Greek practices of prophecy, initiation, battlefield mania, Nympholepsy, poetic furor, erotic mania, and philosophical mania. The book helpfully draws together all of these practices as all involving ‘alteration of consciousness.’

Yet the author only mentions drug plants in the context of the Eleusinian mysteries and only then as an unlikely hypothesis. Instead, the author favors ‘alteration of consciousness’ by non-drug means, especially sensory deprivation (as if that were reliable and powerful).

So, we have a tiny step forward: recognizing ‘alteration of consciousness’ throughout ancient Greek culture. Yet it persists in the ‘anything but drugs’ fallacy.

This fallacy is usually tied to broad and vague phrases like ‘alteration of consciousness.’ As if all sorts of altering consciousness are essentially the same and as if there were no content to altering consciousness besides the very fact of alteration itself. That the book is praised for ‘applying a cognitive approach’ shows how banal such approaches can be.

There’s of course little interest in loose cognitive representationalism, block universe determinism, and non-control. The book’s main take away is on the social role of these practices that involve alterations of consciousness, not on any sort of meaning. The author is also not immersed in the literary/metaphorical culture of ancient Greece.

The main use of the book is as a source-book, but it has to be read carefully, always keeping the author’s ‘anything but drugs’ and banal ‘cognitive’ approach at bay. I’m even skeptical of its use at that. Better to learn the egodeath theory and metaphorical way of interpreting and then read the ancient Greek sources for yourself.