The Festival Experience: Trance States & Rituals
Hey there! This article is part 2 of a previous post I did that was essentially just a beautified journal entry I wrote about an LSD trip I had at Boom Festival 2023.
In this article, I explore the role of festivals in modern times, considering their influence on shaping human culture throughout history. I’ll delve into their transformative power and sacred significance, focusing on how they enable trance states, higher states of consciousness, and facilitate rituals.
Enjoy!
Festivals Across time
When we talk about festivals nowadays, people usually imagine a music festival where attendees go to get wasted, party, and indulge in wild experiences.
While they may offer a superficial sense of community, allowing brief interactions with a variety of people, they often lack opportunities for deep connections.
Festivals and art go hand-in-hand, but at modern festivals, attendees often act as mere consumers rather than participants. Additionally, the extent to which art is genuinely appreciated versus being mere background noise for partying is debatable.
If you think about it for a second, I believe you’ll realize this wasn’t always the case. Festivals have been an important component in defining culture across human history and cultures, serving as a means of celebration, ritual, and community bonding.
Throughout history, festivals have served as essential cultural events that celebrated the beliefs and traditions of a society. In ancient civilizations, these gatherings were central to religious life and played a key role in the development of cultural and artistic practices.
In ancient Greece, festivals such as the Panathenaea and the Dionysia honoured the via artistic expression like theatrical performances. The Epic narratives that nowadays are read and analysed in boring classrooms - were read and enacted with a fervour that made the stories come alive, allowing people to experience them as vibrant realities.
In Indigenous cultures, festivals were deeply entwined with nature's rhythms and the spiritual world. These gatherings were opportunities to honour ancestors, seek guidance from spirits, and celebrate the cyclical dance of life
Through elaborate ceremonies and rituals, participants sought to connect with their gods, believing that their devotion could invoke divine favour and protection.
I think you get the point I’m trying to get at - the festival used to serve a higher purpose, they were a place for rituals, sacred ceremonies, higher states of mind and they were usually closely related with deep spiritual believes. They reinforced social bonds and cultural identity. They offered a space for communities to come together, celebrate shared histories, and strengthen bonds through collective experience thus shaping society.
But what was once sacred has become spectacle. The cult value of art and performance is lost, replaced by entertainment that, while enjoyable, misses the deeper connection and transformation that ancient festivals provided.
This is not to say, that the original festival experience is lost, just way harder to find, and recently I felt like I tapped into it and I’ve been chasing it ever since.
B o o m
Deep down in our bones, we still crave for that ancient festival experience. I know I do, and that’s why Boom’s 2023 edition became such a praised experience among my group of friends.
But wait - you may say - how was your Boom experience different from the “Modern Festival” you just described? Wasn’t it just a several day party, where you and your friends took some drugs and danced to a DJ?
Well, yes, no - i don’t know honestly. Somehow it felt different, it felt meaningful. I’ve been going to every edition since 2018 - it happens every two years and it skipped 2020 because of Covid, so 2023 was my third Boom. The festival started in 1997 and it evolved a lot since. If you’re curious, here’s a video that I enjoyed about its history.
Boom takes place in a remote place by the shores of a lake in Idanha-a-Nova deep in Portugal’s interior . Getting there is a bit of a challenge, and once you’re there it’s a big commitment to leave the grounds, so people usually don’t. The festival has no corporate sponsorships or advertisements so you’re totally off the grid.
The grounds are filled with art installations in every corner that provide really immersive experiences and offers a wide variety of workshops and talks focused on personal growth, spirituality, sustainability, and holistic well-being. While the music stages are a big part of the festival, they are just one aspect of the overall experience.
It’s the perfect place for a spiritual retreat, and that’s how me and my group of childhood friends describe our time here. Every edition provided a fun, cool and an out of the box experience, but the 2023 hit quite a bit harder, several aspects might have contributed to it:
The group was super solid:
Lots of people I already deeply knew from childhood attended (more than ever before).
But our camp also had many new and exciting people with whom we bonded and truly connected.
Boom can be a really arduous environment to master, and after 3 editions I feel like we were finally able to do it.
We had all the important stuff to ensure really decent quality of life .throughout the festival - including a FUCKING TARP that allowed the group to have a “second base” outside of camp.
We also, for the first time, assigned meeting points across the festival, to ease the process of finding each other when we were in different areas and stages.
Weather wasn’t as excruciating hot as it used to be - still pretty hot but not at the level that you feel like doing anything throughout the entire day.
My state of mind was particularly elevated during that period (checkout this blog post on that).
Ok but, what do all of these things have to do with the “ancient festival experience you described” - you ask?
Well, those sort of experiences are a collective endeavour - you can’t make them by yourself, people need to come together, work together and vibe together to elevate the collective experience - part of what makes them special is the feeling that you participated in something bigger than yourself while also feeling deeply personal.
Boom is a wonderful canvas for you to draw your own experience on - but just attending doesn’t a guarantee that you’ll have a transformative experience, you’ll need to work and search for it and it doesn’t depend solely on you - there’s a luck factor involved.
With that being said, several aspects contribute to elevating the collective experience at Boom Festival. I've observed that the festival attracts groups of people who are deeply dedicated to:
Exploring Trance States and Higher States of Mind
Upholding and Embracing Rituals with a Sense of Sacredness
Let me expand on those a bit.
Trance States and Higher States of Mind
Participants are committed to reaching altered states of consciousness through music, dance, and meditation, fostering a shared sense of transcendence and connection.
When I talk about trance here, I’m not referring to psytrance itself—although I’m pretty sure the name of the music genre derives from the state of mind I’m describing.
Transe is an important aspect of the human experience, attainment of this state has been a primary driving force for human beings. Over the thousand of years of our development, awareness was a prime necessity - that awareness may result in a vibrant state in which our senses become more acute and time and space merge into a feeling of unity.
The hunter's unfocused alertness - his trance - is similar to the attentive form of meditation practice in Zen Buddhism. The word trance means precisely what the latin roots say, to move across, to pass over to the object. One's whole being is directed towards a goal. One is alert with universal attention, aware of all, yet somehow filtering out what is extraneous or irrelevant.
You can checkout this brilliant podcast on the subject if you’re curious to hear more:
A good party—or any cultural event, really, but let's use parties as an example—can be defined by how easily you can reach and maintain a trance state.
Being fully immersed in the atmosphere, breathing it in and absorbing its energy until it overflows and causes your body to move on its own—that's what we're all looking for when we attend a party. When a genuine smile spreads across your face, and a glow in your eyes resonates with everyone around you. You're not thinking or rationalising; you're simply experiencing the moment. Everything is instinctual, and everything flows naturally.
When reaching this state isn't easy, you become bored. As a protective mechanism, you might enter a loop of continuous desires for a goal—let's get a drink, let's go for a smoke, let's check out the other stage, etc. Having a goal, something to aim for individually or as a group, keeps your mind busy and protects you from boredom. However, this goal-oriented mindset is not what defines a truly good experience at a party.
I believe that the desire for attainment of these trance states at parties is what motivates the use of drugs. While drugs are certainly not a requirement or guarantee for reaching this state, they can make it easier and improve your odds, even though they can also make the experience less meaningful.
At my most recent festival, which was also psytrance-based, but less spiritual inclined, (checkout Voov if you’re curious) a friend told me something along these lines:
I wish we took it (psychedelic drugs) in a more meaningful way. Doing it in festivals is plenty fun, but it can also feel superficial, like we’re not tapping to its full potential.
Different sort of drugs lead to different types of trance states. Psychedelics like LSD, Magic Mushrooms, etc are the ones that I personally feel better align with the sort of traditional festivals / higher conscious vibe. Uppers like speed, cocaine, MDMA are also really craved in festivals like Boom and eventhough I get the appeal, I feel like can also make turn the collective vibe a bit “heavier”.
My Boom group has an inside joke where we describe “the vibe” of a stage, or an environment as its “jelly” - originally it was the Portuguese term “Geleia”. There’s lots of different types of jelly - there’s lighthearted, playfull jelly - like the one I described in the first chapter with the carnival set - but there’s also heavy, chewed-up jelly that can feel even a bit scary at times. Jelly is something that emerges from the collective—it's hard to control—but I believe the substance a person is on plays a significant role in shaping their contribution to the jelly.
Boom has a very wide spread of jellies, most of them really good, I’d say.
Embracing Rituals with a Sense of Sacredness
The community places great importance on rituals, celebrating them with reverence and respect, which adds a profound and spiritual dimension to the festival experience.
You have to be committed and to embrace the experience - the rituals that are celebrated and offered to you in the festival.
Now there’s a few factors to this, and it can be easier said than done. Obviously if you’re in a meditation session, or a workshop that’s just not resonating with you I’m not saying that you have to force bullshit yourself into it. But I am saying that you should definitely open yourself to knew experiences, and embrace the ones that do resonate to you at some level, even if they might make you feel silly, or insecure - just say fuck it. Take a leap of faith! Do something that you’d never do in your every day life. Push the barriers of your human experience - you might learn something. There’s a lot of power if it’s not just you doing this, but a community of people.
At Boom, the kickstar of the festival is a ceremony called “the lighting of the fire”. People gather around a bonfire lit by shamans while a choir sings what feel like ancient songs. People softly dance, around it, other meditate into the fire, others pray, other burn papers or leafs into it.
Human attention is the the most important commodity of the 21st century and the act of being present, focused, dedicated on something as a community - like this - feels so powerful.
Throughout the festival people come back to the place where the fire was originally lit for comfort and meditation - it’s a place that feels safe and calm when comparing with the extravaganza that’s happening everywhere else at night. I heard that at old editions the bonfire was lit throughout the entire festival. In the 2018 edition every time I went there it was lit and kept alive by the fire keepers. But that’s not the case anymore due to incendiary risk.
And yet the tradition remains, people still gather, people still sing, and people still go there for comfort.
Whether it's the opening ceremony of the dance temple, a visit to the mud bath, or a meditation session—whatever it is, open your heart to the experience. Take it seriously while embracing its playful nature if that’s the case, and let it be meaningful to you.
The Initiatory Moment
If everything goes right, your festival experience can pass a threshold and become transformative. When I say transformative here I don’t mean it as - you’ll become a completely different person and your worldview will radically change - that might happen, but I feel like it’s more subtle than that.
It becomes something that deeply touches your heart and that you remember fondly for the rest of your life. Memories that you draw strength from and that inspire from then on.
I think an important part to reach that point is to make it a journey and this is where festivals like Boom do way better that your more traditional music festival. From the moment the bonfire is lit, and the festival officially starts there’s music for almost the entire day, there’s a bunch of activities happening all around - it’s impossible to attend everything - and you’re not meant to. You’re meant to carve your way, write your own story on those grounds, go through your own journey.
And the fact that there’s hardship involved also plays a role. It cannot always be an easy journey, otherwise the best moments don’t feel as meaningful. Getting to Boom is a whole entire fucking process - there’s quite a bit of stress involved and dealing with that unbearable heat it’s also not easy - but that makes the dance floor feel so much fucking better when you actually get there.
I really like how in one of his podcasts Joshua Schrei describes this transformative experience - or "the initiatory moment," as he puts it - so I’ll just close this post with his quote:
Historically, festivals were powerful because something lived right at the center. The ancient festival existed to take participants on a journey, and that journey had a culmination, a center point, a sacred stone or a shaft of wheat revealed, or a moment of communion of some kind.
The initiatory moment, the apex of the festival, so that all the many avenues of rapture, the dancing, the singing, the pounding of feet, the sweating, the chanting, the poetic recitation, the mask making, the theatrical enactment, the pain induction, the trance possession, the whoops and hollers of the oracles ridden by the gods, the tears of grief and lament, the flower offerings were all harnessed to take people to one place.
The initiatory moment, where at the culmination of all, one is cracked open, the small, self blown wide open, and one slips, floats, is carried off, is devoured into a moment of eternity to glimpse the visage of the God.
This is the journey of the festival and why so many festivals involve actual journeys. The procession, the procession to submerge the goddess, the procession to glimpse the stone. The procession was key to the ancient greek festival. The center to which the sacred action is drawn is naturally a sanctuary where sacrifices and initiation take place. But the pathway there is also important and sacred.
The annual procession to Eleusis for the initiatory rites was massive. Thousands of people parading 30 holy hill outside of Athens. Burkert describes basket bearers, water bearers, fire bearers, vase bearers, branch bearers with boughs of bay and olive and laurel, bearers of secret vessels for Dionysus and demeter, sacrificial war, chariots massive, massive masks, gorgon heads, which the festival goers honored with offerings, and by not staring directly at the gorgons eyes.
Then the arrival at the sanctuary on the great hill, the arrival to torches all ablaze, the shrines decked in flowers, the smoke thick, the songs, the dances, the tears, all enhanced by the flow state one experiences after an 18 month mile parade while fasting. And then the great enactment began, almost certainly brought to humming, pounding, transcendent life through the ingestion of entheogenic sacrament.
The journey toward the initiatory moment, which necessitated going into the deepest depths first.
(…)
The initiatory moment, the primal, somatic working of consciousness, which drifts in winding spirals and longs to be taken on a journey towards center, towards rupture, towards renewal, towards home. We have to understand how the festival mirrors the workings of consciousness itself, what it is for consciousness to have such a focal point. Imagine years of waiting to be initiated at the festival. Friends who had gone through the initiation and come back changed, but can't speak about it. What little they say comes with the welling of tears, the tears that arrive with the memory of something sharp and bright, whispers of the story of the goddess to be told in full only at the festival, one's entire socio cultural experience of the world, oriented around this mythic narrative of death and renewal.
See you Around
I seriously hope you enjoyed this article - I’m trying to write more about things that feel deeply personal, and I’m quite happy with how this piece came out. If you did consider subscribing to my Substack 😊.
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