The noetic connection: synaesthesia, psychedelics, and language

Abstract The literatures that touch on synaesthesias-scientific, art-historical, literary, phenomenological, ethnographic, psychodelic-vary widely in their definitions, their interpretations, and their degree of comfort with the first-person, subjective nature of experiential reports. The significances given to synaesthetic experiences are similarly wide-ranging. This paper explores the relationships among synaesthesias, psychedelic experience, and language, highlighting Terence McKenna's synaesthetic language experiences on DMT and magic mushrooms. We describe the complexities of creating and performing with the Synestheater, a system that provides the means to weave together, in multiple mappings, two or more complex visual, aural, and linguistic systems in live performance.