...Errrm - soz Tuesday. Basically, on the whole, the visual hallucinations encountered during the great majority of European psychedelic plant sessions are incredibly more structured and organised than the entoptic imagery. What's happened is a hugely over-generalised response to the Dowson & Lewis-Williams work on the shamanic art of South Africa, where such 'entoptic' like imagery was described by certain tribes - and this has wrongly been transposed onto all sorts of rock art. Dowson in particular doesn't like this overt explanation of all rock-art. Simply, as he said, "it's crap!" I'm sure Devereux would tell you the same.

In the (approximately) 1000 psychedelic sessions I've done thru the years (utilising many different plants in many controlled conditions), such entoptics are very minimal indeed. However, this aint to say that wasn't the case in neolithic consciousness times; though we do know that a number of cultures (Egyptians for one) had rather well-developed non-entoptic artistry, indicating that consciousness during that period was well-developed beyond the primary formative mathematical process. The mythologies of the Indus also indicate highly formative systems, way beyond primary entoptic systems.

I think it's probably best to say that where we find plants which are known to create entoptic imagery in a fixed form (unlike the datura alkaloids and psilocybin cultures), we can obviously say we have an explanation of the art. Where such psychotropes do not elicit such imagery, it's best not to apply such a formula.

Cheers - Paul