Psytrance music culture, particularly at events like Portugal's Boom Festival, exhibits religio-spiritual characteristics through three trajectories: ecstatic self-transcendence, performative self-expression, and reflexive engagement with conscious alternatives. The article examines neotrance within contemporary trance events, the countercultural inheritance of 'tribal' psytrance festivals, and how participants' 'ultimate concerns' are dramatized within the festival framework. These elements together offer insights into the spiritual and communal dimensions of psychedelic festival culture.
The compound DMT (N,N-dimethyltryptamine), best known as the psychoactive ingredient in ayahuasca, has had its own complex cultural history that scholars have largely overlooked. DMT was first identified as a psychotomimetic in 1956, became a recreational drug in the 1960s, and was later classified as dangerous with no medicinal value. Since the 1990s it has been reframed as an entheogen enabling access to "hyperspace." DMT produces sudden, short-lasting effects including geometric patterns, synesthesia, out-of-body states, and encounters with beings. Though recognized as an endogenous neurotransmitter that crosses the blood-brain barrier, its purpose in humans and ubiquity in nature remain unexplained.