Expanded states of perception—whether psychedelic, spontaneous, or induced—are a generative source for visionary art. Drawing on Aldous Huxley's writings in Moksha and Laurence Caruana's Manifesto of Visionary Art, the article argues that such experiences allow artists to access transcendental realities. Key methods for immersion include creative writing, close reading, and phenomenological experimentation. The visionary universe draws on light, transfigurations, folklore, and religious imagery, as seen in the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, William Blake, and Gustave Moreau. Extraordinary conscious activities—ecstatic, oneiric, or hypnagogic—are indispensable for creating visionary art, especially in the contemporary period.
This work identifies intersections between decolonial thought and psychedelic philosophy, arguing that visionary aesthetics, liminal phenomenologies, ancestral epistemologies, ethics of resistance, politics of freedom, and kaleidoscopic metaphysics offer conceptual horizons for decolonizing manifestations of the mind. Using an analytical-descriptive methodology, it aims to philosophically justify integrating decoloniality into the reflorescence of psychedelia. The authors propose that psychedelic experiences can be ways of understanding insurgent knowledges, while decolonial conceptions can serve as keys for interpreting psychedelic experiences.
The article traces the concept of psychedelia through the history of philosophy, arguing that psychedelic experience encompasses not only mind-altering substances but also mystical practices, a broad spectrum of conscious states, and a countercultural movement oriented toward liberation. It identifies possible connections between philosophy and psychedelia via visionary aesthetics, perceptual phenomenology, epistemology of consciousness, ethics of resistance, politics of freedom, and originary metaphysics. The re-emergence of psychedelic thought is interpreted as "philopsychedelia"—an analysis of philosophical ideas through psychedelic experience and a description of psychedelic experience through philosophical concepts.