Form Constant - History

History

In 1926, Heinrich Klüver systematically studied the effects of mescaline (peyote) on the subjective experiences of its users. In addition to producing hallucinations characterized by bright, "highly saturated" colors and vivid imagery, Klüver noticed that mescaline produced recurring geometric patterns in different users. He called these patterns 'form constants' and categorized four types: lattices (including honeycombs, checkerboards, and triangles), cobwebs, tunnels, and spirals.

In 1988 David Lewis-Williams and T.A. Dowson incorporated the form constant into their Three Stages of Trance model, the geometric shapes comprising the visuals observed in the model's first stage.

Read more about this topic:  Form Constant

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