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SEX, DRUGS, AND CHRISTIANITY

MA THESIS IN LITERARY STUDIES: LITERATURE CULTURE AND SOCIETY GRADUATE SCHOOL FOR HUMANITIES

UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM

JAMES ELSTON 12428957

SUPERVISOR: SHELLEY GODSLAND SECOND READER: HENK VAN DER LIET

INTRODUCTION

Brave New World and Naked Lunch are amongst the most popular novels in the English literary canon, frequently appearing in all time top one hundred lists and having been translated into over twenty five languages between them. It is not surprising, therefore, that because of this exposure they are also some of the most contested texts. Brave New World has been subject to global censorship since its initial publication in 1932: it was banned in Ireland, accused of endorsing anti-religious messages; the Australian Methodist Church banned it the same year due to concerns that it encouraged “sexual games for children”; in 1967 it was banned in India, with the state system accusing Aldous Huxley of being a “pornographer”; it has been consistently contested throughout the US education system, with one parent reportedly asking, “Why would we teach kids what is negative in society?” Even within the past decade, eighty years after its initial print, Brave New World has appeared twice on the American Library Association’s top ten most challenged texts. Naked Lunch, too, appears alongside Brave New World in the ALA’s list of banned and challenged classics. Reviewed upon initial publication in Chicago Review in 1958, its overt sexuality and drug use outraged The University of Chicago so much it considered censorship of the paper itself, instigating the resignation of all but one of the editors. When it was subsequently published a year later by Paul Carroll in Big Table Magazine, he, alongside former Chicago Review colleague Irving Rosenthal, were found guilty of distributing obscene material within the US mail system. The text was first published in its entirety in Paris in 1959 due to well-founded fears of American censorship for its sexual content. When copies of the 1959 Olympia Press edition were forwarded to Grove Press, the U.S. Customs Service deliberately sought out and seized copies of the text, preventing distribution and publication. These customs agents acted as independent judges and executioners of their personal definition of obscenity. So, in efforts to circumvent them, the copies were sent to Judith Schmidt, an employee of Grove Press who subsequently forwarded the texts. When the publishing house finally received and published the text in 1962, it was subject to an obscenity trial in Boston, Massachusetts, resulting in its censorship.

So what is it that makes these texts so frequently challenged on a personal, institutional and global level? Why are these texts considered to be so outrageous that it is deemed necessary to abridge free literary expression on such a significant scale? In this dissertation, I argue that censorship occurred because the depictions of sexual relations and drug use are contrary to Christian teaching through the violation and

destruction of the sacrosanct Christian soul. I argue that the societies depicted are contrary to the ecclesiastical advocation of postmarital, heteronormative forms of intercourse, as well as the abstinence from drugs that injure the human body and soul and prevent closeness with God. I further suggest that forms of control, enacted through conditioning in reproductive sex and suppressive drugs, are also in contention with divinely ordained free will, and serve as metaphors for state control. Crucial to my arguments is the premise that institutional Christianity concerns itself predominantly with the instruction and moderation of human behaviour, with the ultimate aim the unification of the soul with God. This moderation extends from the act of transgression to the innate desire to transgress, owing to Saint Augustine’s formulation of concupiscence that is congenitally inherited from Original Sin. According to Augustine, human nature changed at the moment of Adam’s transgression, rendering mankind a mass damnata, susceptible to all forms of sin not just of the libido. As a result of this inclination towards transgression, ecclesiastical teaching focuses on the regulation of transgressive behaviour, and this is rooted in the nourishment of the soul. Nourishment, in Christianity, relies on abstinence and regulation, and these texts depict neither.

Desire, according to Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, is the motivating force driving the soul towards a goal. Desire, therefore, can manifest in the goal of religious transcendence, but can also propel the soul towards sin. I argue that using drugs and indulging in sexual promiscuity are merely misdirected attempts to shortcut divine transcendence. Huxley, in his epilogue to The Devils of Loudun, expresses a similar sentiment: “Man,” he argues, possesses a “deep-seated urge to self-transcendence”: “always and everywhere human beings have felt the radical inadequacy of their personal existence,” manifesting as a desire to “escape … the insulated self” (674). In Huxley’s construction there are three forms of self-transcendence: upwards, towards God, achieved through virtuous acts; horizontally, in work and hobbies that are fixed in materiality; and down, towards pleasures of the flesh that shallowly mimic sublime transcendence whilst inhibiting spiritual growth. In these texts we are presented predominantly with forms of downwards transcendence in drug taking and sexual interactions, divorcing the texts from notions of God. The texts, therefore, primarily engage with Christianity through negation, presenting the opposite of ecclesiastical instruction.

Whether it was Huxley’s or Burroughs’ conscious intention, these novels are, in their subtexts, deeply religious. Huxley asks what is the human soul when all its desires and needs are removed? Would we rather be Lenina Crown or John the Savage? Would

we rather live in a state of constant bliss, taking happy drugs, having consequence-free sex and lacking agency in a world for which we are perfectly conditioned? Or would we, like John, prefer to endure the tribulations of human existence because we believe there is more to life than pure fleshly hedonism? Christianity, and the teachings of the Bible, align with John’s existence—and the fact the society of Brave New World is geared for Lenina is precisely what makes the text so objectionable. Huxley has removed what it means to be human: our struggle. Or, at least, our ability to choose. Christianity relies on this struggle in the instruction and moderation of human behaviour. In Burroughs, with his array of revolting creatures and insistence on materiality, we witness the soul’s journey through Hell, a journey that denies all possibility of upwards transcendence. In both, the soul, and its ability to seek unification with God, is compromised.

The proposition of this dissertation is to explore the ways in which sex and drugs engage with Christianity through the implications on the sacrosanct soul. This engagement derives not just from the Bible proper, but also from the Christian socio-religious context of their respective publications. Deploying a variety of extant and contemporary theological, literary and historical theory, in conjunction with relevant Bible verses, this dissertation aims to inform understanding around all levels of the authors’ engagement with Christianity, sex, and drugs. What we must remember when looking at translations of the Vulgate is that each translation is defined by its cultural context. Whilst the New International Version provides the most up-to-date, peer-reviewed translation, it was not published until 1978, and therefore it would be anachronistic for me to impose it upon Huxley and Burroughs. For this reason, I will use the King James Version—despite its antiquity it was still the dominant version used within English-speaking Christianity. I will begin with sex, variously defined in terms of reproduction, intercourse and sexuality, which, I argue, are the three principle engagements with Christianity. Firstly, reproduction through the Bokanovsky Process in Brave New World does not necessitate intercourse, splitting the sacrosanct embryo in an industrial setting that commodifies the value of human life according to output. Machines take on reproductive capacities whilst the division of the embryo proves problematic in the concept of the indivisible soul. “Man becomes,” in the words of Marshall McLuhan “the sex organs of the machine world” (46). The vying of the rival factions for total homogeny within Naked Lunch threatens the individual’s free will, and this holds true with the varying forms of conditioning of the World State. Here, the predestination of embryos refutes Calvinist dogma, whilst further threatening free will. The next sexual engagement is through depictions of intercourse, which, according to Christian doctrine, should be strictly postmarital. All forms of

intercourse in both texts occur outside marriage, with promiscuity actively encouraged in Brave New World whilst the Interzone of Naked Lunch is an economy centred around the commodification of intercourse. This is defined by the Christian perception that extramarital intercourse is sinful, whilst abstinence or restriction to marriage is akin to piety. Next, I will discuss homosexuality, which, as a term and concept is absent within the Bible. Homophobia, therefore, is presented as socially constructed. This is exemplified through the Rumpus Room sequence, in which a youth is hanged whilst being raped, representing state discrimination against homosexuals in a scene that insists upon its materiality. All possibility of transcendence, even in the boy’s death, is reduced to the material of blood and ejaculate. Dr Benway parodies contemporary psychoanalytical theory of Edmund Burgler, that insists on homosexuality as a ‘curable disease.’ Again, this deprives individuals of their free will whilst the manipulation of an individual’s sexuality is presented as ethically problematic.

The succeeding chapter will explore drugs and Christianity, beginning with a historical overview of the religious import of certain, entheogenic drugs. Given the prevalence of drugs in some religions, the question is asked, why are they antithetical to Christian piety? I suggest that this is in part due to the conflation of genuinely harmful drugs, such as soma and junk, with entheogenic drugs, such as yagé and peyotl. The distinction can be readily made through Huxley’s notions of self-transcendence: soma and junk enable downwards self-transcendence, whilst entheogenic drugs allow interaction with the divine; ‘opening out’ instead of ‘narrowing down.’ The authors, I argue, advocate civil liberties in the ability to choose to take drugs that can and do assist in religious enlightenment. Drug depictions in these texts, I suggest, engage with Christianity fourfold: first, in the ability of drugs to injure the user physically and spiritually; second, in their ability to deflect adversity that would otherwise induce Christian sentiment; third, that these drugs remove an individual’s free will, as in soma’s state sponsorship or the physiological addiction created by junk; fourth, in junk we see an allegory for consumerism, the destructive effects of which reflect the material emphasis of consumer capitalism.

CHAPTER ONE: SEX

Havelock Ellis, a leading sexual psychologist at the turn of the twentieth century and early proponent for the naturalisation of homosexual desire, suggested that even the best authorities “hesitate to define exactly what ‘sex’ is” (7). What is it about a term, so evidently necessary in the perpetuation of species, that renders its definition so difficult? I argue that the difficulty lies in the repressive attitude Christianity fosters around the subject, which has obfuscated its meaning. For the purpose of this dissertation, ‘sex’ refers to anything pertaining to reproduction, intercourse, and sexuality. Susan Sontag, in her influential collection of essays Styles of Radical Will, recognises that since Christianity “concentrated on sexual behaviour as the root of virtue, everything pertaining to sex has been a ‘special case’ in our culture, evoking peculiarly inconsistent attitudes” (49). These texts, therefore, engage with Christianity through deviations from ecclesiastical doctrine that prescribes postmarital and heteronormative forms of intercourse. The texts also deal indirectly with the problematic division of the sacrosanct human soul through scientific methods of mass replication that deny individuality and thereby the soul’s immortality. My premise for this chapter is that the authors engage with Christianity through the perceived negative ramifications of certain forms of sex on the sanctity of the human soul. Through the Christian denouncement of extramarital and non-heteronormative modes of intercourse and sexuality as well as the extra-utero division and replication of the individual, the authors engage with Christianity through the degradation of the sacrosanct human soul that is fundamental to Christian notions of free will and eschatology. I argue that there are three principle engagements with Christianity, and I will explore them in this order: first, reproduction and replication, including the eugenics of the Bokanovsky process, Calvinist beliefs and the implications of caste predestination on free will followed by points of overlap with Naked Lunch in how conditioning can affect divinely ordained free will. Second, sexual deviance: promiscuity directly opposes the doctrine that restricts intercourse and reproduction to marriage, with contraceptive use directly engaging with the Catholic denomination’s belief in the sanctity of embryonic life. Third, homosexuality is contrary to ecclesiastical teaching, yet the word is nowhere found in the Bible proper. Violent depictions of sexual encounters in Naked Lunch are homosexual in nature and emphasise materiality, thereby removing any sense of transcendence. Dr Benway’s work to ‘cure’ homosexuals takes precedent from contemporary psychoanalytical discourse, whilst the manipulation of sexuality is problematic within notions of free will.

As I will expand upon in the next chapter, the engagement of drug use with Christianity is relatively transparent in its direct impact upon the human body and the individual’s capacity to bond with God. However, the significance of sex within Christianity is less obvious, with the ecclesiastical regulation of desire itself perhaps reflecting a gross overstep into the most intimate aspects of human lives. The Bible, and words attributed to Jesus himself, is surprisingly quiet upon the subject of sexual relations. The engagement, therefore, lies with the Church’s constructed ideology that is defined by its historical context. By providing the relevant context of repressive sexual instruction within the Christian church, I hope not only to clarify the motivations for this institutional repression that are purportedly rooted in Christian doctrine, but also demonstrate to which aspects of sexual instruction the texts respond.

REPRODUCTION

In Huxley’s preface to the 1946 reprint, he explains that the dominant theme of Brave New World “is not the advancement of science as such; it is the advancement of science as it affects human individuals” (xliv). ‘Individual’ itself stems from the soul being ‘indivisible,’ as the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann explains: “The individuality of the soul guaranteed its indestructibility, its immortality, and this explained why human beings had to answer for themselves at the Last Judgement” (257). “That which cannot be taken apart cannot perish,” Luhmann argues (172). The essential indivisibility of the human soul, beginning with the individual egg, guarantees its eternity. The Bokanovsky Process is a process by which “One egg .. will bud, will proliferate, will divide … and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult” (3-4). The final result: “Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before,” enabling “The principle of mass production” to be “at last applied to biology” (3, 5). Their eugenics policy, “the foundation on which everything else is built,” is therefore problematic within the Christian context for its division of the individual that begins pre-fertilisation (195). Genesis 1:26 states, “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion.” Replication “in our image” stems from God, whilst the Bokanovsky Process effectively replaces God in procreative capacity, deifying the assembly line in the creation of life and mass production of citizens. The “advancement of science” therefore, through the division of the individual, jeopardises Christian notions of the human soul whilst denying the role of God in reproduction. Furthermore, through the extra-utero creation of “a full-sized adult” from “one egg,” Huxley foregrounds the

science of procreation and thereby reduces the ineffability of human existence to its cellular beginnings, able to be replicated on an industrial scale.

What is more, infinite division of the singular seems to be the exact and final aim of the World State: “‘But, alas,’ the Director shook his head. ‘we can’t bokanovskify indefinitely.’ Ninety-six seemed to be the limit” (5). Their aim, “to manufacture as many batches of identical twins as possible,” is hampered by an inability to surpass “ninety-six” identical babies. Their very goal, therefore, is to divide the sacrosanct individual ad infinitum, with the final aim total homogeny of castes within the World State, thereby destroying any possibility of the soul and after life. In Naked Lunch, however, rival factions destroy individuality by means of cloning, absorbing, and controlling telepathically. As in Brave New World, their motivation is the annihilation of individuality, but the engagement with Christianity does not sustain to their motivations. In Huxley’s text, the division of the individual occurs before birth; in Burroughs’ text, the master controllers willingly pursues their own division, their victims assuming their image. Therefore, the factions engage with Christianity by means of controlling free will, which is also the motivation behind the Bokanovsky Process. The Divisionists, named “because they literally divide,” “cut off tiny bits of their flesh and grow exact replicas of themselves … eventually there will be only … one person in the world with millions of separate bodies” (149). This self-propagating method of replication produces identical offspring, dividing until the “one person” dominates the world through their millions of replicas. The Liquefactionists seek to control through the “eventual merging of everyone into One Man by a process of protoplasmic absorption” (131). The Sender is telepathic, and “has to send all the time … there can only be one Sender at one place-time … one Sender could control the planet” (148). Whatever the method, argues fellow Beat Generation author Ron Loewinsohn, “all attempts at control involve denying the subjectivity of the other” (572). The denial of individual subjectivity is achieved through self-propagation, assimilation or telepathic control, all processes by which “the world is turned into an image of the controller, who remains the only subject, everyone else reduced to the status of an object” (Loewinsohn 572). As in the World State, the end goal is total control, and this too, is problematic in its engagement with Christian notions of free will.

Control of free will, seen in the homogenising aims of the rival factions of Naked Lunch, is distinct from the control of the free will of World State citizens. As I will explore next, World State citizens have volition but not true free will; they live in a society which affords the illusion of freedom, but they are still restricted by their caste designations and postnatal conditioning. The rival factions, on the other hand, aim for total control of both

volition and free will through complete homogeny. Whilst I make this distinction, both authors similarly engage with Christianity through the impact of direct and indirect modes of control on the individual’s freedom, which is fundamentally divinely ordained and crucial to explanations of Original Sin. To destroy one’s individuality not only jeopardises the concept of the immortal soul, but it also necessitates a controlling external force whose aim is to limit free will. The point here is that these citizens lack free will and as such have no ability to choose God. They are, therefore, not morally responsible. Free will imposes the obligation of moral responsibility, and this is crucial to the concept of concupiscence inherited by Original Sin. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy documents, “According to the dominant view of the relationship between free will and moral responsibility, if an agent does not have free will, then that agent is not morally responsible for her actions” (Timpe). In the World State, where caste designations and postnatal conditioning subjugates free will, the citizens therefore hold no moral responsibility for sin; they live in an amoral society.

Whilst I have discussed how the prenatal division of the individual is problematic within Christian notions of the indivisible soul, I have intentionally omitted discussion surrounding the World State’s methods of pre- and postnatal caste designation so I can discuss in accompaniment to the psychological conditioning of Dr Benway. In both, citizens are not only genetically alike, but their individuality is even further diminished by their conditioning. Max Weber, in his seminal text the Protestant Ethic, argues that predestination is the “most characteristic dogma” of Calvinism (115). John Calvin himself defined it as, “God's eternal decree, by which He compacted with himself what he willed to become of each man. For all are not created in equal condition; rather, eternal life is foreordained for some, eternal damnation for others” (21, 5). Calvin’s doctrine of predestination, whether “each man” is foreordained to salvation or damnation, guarantees the existence of a soul and its eternity. I argue that Huxley’s representation of caste designation engages with the Calvinist doctrine of predestination through the medium of assembly line production, which replaces the role of God with human intervention. The effect engages with Christianity double fold: for whilst divine predestination guarantees free will during material life, free will for State citizens has been severely curtailed through the physical and mental prescription for each caste, whilst eternity ceases to exist as concept. Concurrent with Calvinist doctrine, citizens are discriminated against prenatally, not through divine intervention but rather “oxygen-shortage … keeping an embryo below par” (11). “At seventy per cent of normal oxygen,” the Director explains, “you get dwarfs. At less than seventy, eyeless monsters,” “who are no use at all”, concludes Mr Foster

(11). Here, Huxley highlights the human body in strictly material terms; in this world, physical and mental capacity determine social worth. The State’s form of caste designation parodies Calvin’s assertion that “all are not created in equal condition,” not only removing the role of God but also denying an afterlife by forcing the effects of this discrimination onto the earthly plane, as Mustapha Mond explains:

Epsilon sacrifices [are] the line of least resistance. His conditioning has laid down rails along which he’s got to run. He can’t help himself; he’s fore-doomed. Even after decanting, he’s still inside a bottle—an invisible bottle of infantile and embryonic fixations. (196)

Alluding to Calvin, the compound “fore-doomed” reinforces the epsilon's foreordained damnation, whilst the repetition of personal pronouns as both the subject and object of the clause, “He can’t help himself,” affirms his own role in consummating his fate. The controller uses the metaphor of an “invisible bottle” to highlight how stringently the “embryonic fixations” moderate the behaviour of the epsilon, providing the illusion of free will within impermeable parameters. “Rails” enable progression through life but restrict him to a predetermined route, with the allusion to the mechanical power of the railway reinforcing the epsilon’s role as interchangeable component of industrial progression. Jerome Meckier, in his study of the “Americanization” of the Brave New World typescript, explains that “machinery does the work of procreation. The workforce consists of machine-made products” (431): "standard Gammas, unvarying Deltas, uniform Epsilons" (6). “Machine-made products,” that are “standard … unvarying … uniform,” are also interchangeable, whilst Meckier hints at an inversion of roles in which man works for and is produced by machine. Machine takes on all procreative capacities, and therefore takes deified status as creator of life. Since the machine is material, and its reproductive function explicable through science, there is no demand for metaphysic. So, through the caste designation and Bokanovsky Process of the World State, Huxley effectively removes any possibility of transcendence for the citizens, whose individuality and free will are simultaneously jeopardised.

Proponents of the World State repeatedly refer to these test tube citizens, one of “ninety-six” identical embryos, as “individuals,” imbuing an illusory perception of free will. Yet citizens, the Director concedes, are “so conditioned that they practically can’t help behaving as they ought to behave” (194). In Brave New World, the citizen’s individuality is not just destroyed through prenatal predestination, but it is also destroyed through postnatal conditioning and the repetition of maxims, which are then self-perpetuated throughout society. The World State attempts to justify its citizens’ predestination and

conditioning as good for the individual: “The secret of happiness and virtue—liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable destiny” (36). It is worth, here, drawing a parallel to Christian indoctrination, a form of “conditioning” that confronts the “unescapable destiny” of death with the promise of eternal salvation, providing the promise of eternal “happiness” in exchange for a life of “virtue.” Whilst the conditioning of the World State relies upon the subconscious moderation of everyday activities, revolving around “making people like their unescapable destiny” with the focus upon “happiness and virtue,” the conditioning in Naked Lunch revolves around the total subjugation of citizens within Annexia. Benway, “an expert on … brainwashing and control” who “deplore[s] brutality” on grounds of its inefficiency, deploys public policies in Annexia that effectively subjugate the individual’s free will in efforts for total control (20, 21). He enacts policies of “prolonged mistreatment” to the entire population, which “gives rise … to anxiety and a feeling of special guilt” (21). This, I argue, represents a form of conditioning distinct from the World State, whose aims of “happiness and virtue” can at least arguably be perceived as in some way noble in its end result. The desired effect for both societies, however, is the control of free will, which has been demonstrated to be fundamental to our ability to make morally informed choices. “After a few months of” document checks, strip searches and intrusive searchlights, “the citizens cowered in corners like neurotic cats,” effectually subjugating the citizen’s divinely ordained free will (23).

Both the World State and Benway condition with the intention of controlling their citizens’ actions, yet Benway adopts an even more totalitarian goal, unsatisfied until the entire populace are dehumanised and catatonic. He psychologically manipulates the subject through sexual humiliation, bragging that the human will can be controlled to the point of “complete hypnotic control”:

Many subjects are vulnerable to sexual humiliation. Nakedness, stimulation with aphrodisiacs, constant supervision to embarrass subject and prevent relief of masturbation (erections during sleep automatically turn on an enormous vibrating electric buzzer that throws the subject out of the bed into cold water, thus reducing the incidence of wet dreams to a minimum) … After that the Interrogator can gain complete hypnotic control. (26)

The “subjects” to which Benway refers are ubiquitous, one of “many” when stripped to their base “Nakedness” and sexual mores. To be stripped removes a significant component of postlapsarian man, hearkening back to Original Sin, when “the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked … and made themselves

loincloths” (Genesis 3:7). Whilst this is no doubt indirect in its allusion, the nakedness that Benway insists upon becomes akin to shame, and in this way the Fall assists in his manipulation of his “subjects” through the utilisation of congenital embarrassment and guilt. With Benway gaining “complete hypnotic control,” the sexual subjugation of the individual destroys their free will in its most primal manifestation. This control extends to the manipulation of sexuality as Burroughs parodies medical ‘cures’ for homosexuality. However, I wish to discuss this in greater deal in the next section, relating this cure of “drugs and hypnosis” to the wider homophobic context of 1950s America (26).

Thus far I have discussed how the eugenics of the Bokanovsky Process and the self-perpetuating factions of Naked Lunch destroys any possibility of individuality. I have also demonstrated, with the help of definitions by the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, how the essential ‘indivisability’ of the individual is critical to Christian conceptions of the eternal soul, and how in both Brave new World and Naked Lunch individuality is actively discourage. I have then drawn parallels between the Calvinist dogma of predestination and the caste designations of the World State. These caste designations also jeopardise notions of free will, which, according to … is necessary for moral responsibility. We have seen Dr Benway exceeding the control methods of the World State, subjugating free will to the point of dehumanisation through the psychological manipulation of citizens in Annexia or through varied forms of sexual humiliation. Next, I will look at textual engagement with Christian doctrine that teaches heteronormative and postmarital forms of intercourse and sexuality. The State actively encourages contraceptive use and promiscuity in Brave New World, whilst sex has become the main commodity of the Interzone in Naked Lunch. This commodification engages with Christianity through the degradation of the human body and soul. Whilst one of the hypnopaedic maxims is “Everyone belongs to everyone else,” Huxley does not mention homosexual relations (81). Therefore, I will explore homosexuality in Naked Lunch alone in the context of 1950s Christian America, highlighting the lack of Biblical precedent in homophobia. My premise for this final section is that depictions of homosexual relations engage with Christianity not, as with promiscuity, through explicit textual instruction but rather through contemporary ecclesiastical teaching. I argue that omission from the Vulgate does not equate to toleration of behaviour.

PROMISCUITY

Religion concerns itself predominantly with the instruction and moderation of human behaviour; sex, therefore, so fundamental to human life, has become what Susan Sontag describes as a “special case,” being, in Christian ideology, “the root of virtue” (49). The Bible is transparent in its instruction regarding sexual conduct, and it is worth quoting at length: “For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication: That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour; Not in the lust of concupiscence” (1 Thessalonians 4:3-5). The human body is a “vessel” for the soul that must be respected through abstinence from extramarital sex, and concupiscence itself must be moderated. Augustine first associated Original Sin with the onset of concupiscence that has since been perpetuated congenitally throughout humanity fundamental to the doctrine of total depravity. Christianity, therefore, dominates sexual discourse as a mechanism to delineate the proper nature of sexual behaviour and desire, but simultaneously actively discourages carnal desire itself. Desire is fundamental to any discourse surrounding sex, and is, in Augustinian and Thomistic formulations, what motivates the self towards a goal. This goal can drive the individual to seek transcendence, but can also manifest as carnal desire with the ultimate goal intercourse. Such carnal manifestations of desire, whether the individual acts upon them or not, is blasted against in pastoral guidance and is foregrounded through the confessional of Catholicism. In his seminal work, The History of Sexuality, the French philosopher Michel Foucault contends that “a twofold evolution” occurred that made “the flesh into the root of all evil, shifting the most important moment of transgression from the act itself to the stirrings … of desire” (19-20). Desire, therefore, is dangerous to the sanctity of the human, but it also holds the potential to enable closeness with God, with the repression of carnal desire serving as a method “of spiritual reconversion, of turning back to God, a physical effect of blissful suffering from feeling in one’s body the pangs of temptation and the love that resists it” (23). Significant to this “reconversion” is the notion of sex as both capable of precipitating sinful transgression as well as religious enlightenment. Sex within Christianity, I argue, is defined by the perception that all non-ecclesiastical formulations of sex and carnal desire are inherently sinful, whilst abstinence and control of these natural impulses is akin to Christian piety. Christianity has long involved itself with instructing proper modes of sexual relations, with Peter Gardella tracing the theological origins of this relationship in his text, Innocent Ecstasy, beginning with Augustine of the fourth century AD, who, Gardella

argues, attempted to restrict intercourse solely to procreation and implied that “any consent of the soul to the pleasure of sex was sinful” (11). Pope Gregory I later added that even sex within marriage should be restricted and that married people “should not receive communion after intercourse unless they had first done penance” (11). In the thirteenth century Thomas Aquinas rejected these precedents, arguing that intercourse within marriage “did not entail even venial sin,” with Martin Luther, a key progenitor of the Protestant Reformation in the early sixteenth century, supporting that married “men and women had a fundamental right to sexual enjoyment” (12, 5). However, Martin Luther warned against “bestial desire and lust” that constitutes the general Christian doctrine on sexual relations to this day. So, despite the Cultural Mandate of Genesis 1:28 to “Be fruitful, and multiply,” there is clear contradiction in theological interpretation. Therefore, we must be cautious when undertaking Biblical exegesis because ecclesiastical preaching depends on its historical cultural context.

In Brave New World, the State actively encourages sexual promiscuity in its citizens. I argue that, since the Bokanovsky Process has replaced the necessity of viviparous relationships, sex assumes a non-reproductive role as merely another pursuit of fleshly pleasure. Such pursuits, as Foucault contended, lead to sinful transgression, whilst abstinence potentiates “spiritual reconversion” (23). To repeat the relevant line from 1 Thessalonians 4:3: “For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines “fornication” as “Voluntary sexual intercourse between a man (in restricted use, an unmarried man) and an unmarried woman,” but also provides a lesser used figurative definition: “esp. in Scripture: The forsaking of God for idols; idolatry.” I am predominantly interested in the former definition, whilst its figurative use holds relevance in the idolatry of Henry Ford. He is the embodiment of modernist enterprise and thus becomes idolised as a deity in Brave New World, whilst Christianity exists solely as a relic whose influence can only be seen in meagre adaptations. Anno domini has been replaced by “After Ford” (2); characters frequently exclaim “Ford” in lieu of “Lord”, and they make “a sign of the T” on their stomachs in reverence to Ford’s Model T instead of the crucifix (20). The OED definition, “the forsaking of God for idols,” pertains exactly to these substitutions, foregrounding the material underpinnings of the State that denies any possibility of transcendence.

The Bible, therefore, instructs to refrain from figurative “fornication” that inherently detracts from or replaces praise of God. But it also instructs to refrain from sexual intercourse between two unmarried adults, and this Huxley engages with twofold. “Family, monogamy, romance,” Mond chastises, “everywhere exclusiveness, everywhere

a focussing of interest, a narrow channelling of impulse and energy” (34). In the World State, monogamy no longer exists so all forms of intercourse are, by definition, fornication. Therefore, I argue that Huxley engages with Christianity through its institutional absence, which denies the possibility of marriage and thereby renders all forms of intercourse contrary to Biblical doctrine. Not only is this transgression implied but it is also actively encouraged through the hypnopaedic proverb, “everyone belongs to everyone else” (34). Fanny urges Lenina to replace her current beau Henry Foster, arguing “you ought to be a little more promiscuous” (34). Sexual relations between citizens are not only extramarital, but they are also intentionally varied and non-exclusive. Transgression is the inescapable result of fornication, which is the conditioned final aim of citizens within the World State.

This mode of intercourse further engages with Christianity through its insistence on the use of contraceptives. Traditionally, opposition to contraceptives was not just restricted to Catholicism, with the first Christian denomination only officially sanctioning their use in 1930. Both John Calvin and Martin Luther, for example, both comment upon Genesis 1:28, ardently blasting those who disobey the divine injunction to “Be fruitful, and multiply.” In contrast, for members of the World State, “fertility is merely a nuisance,” with Freemartins—infertile women—comprising around seventy per cent of the female population (10). Unsterilised women and girls must wear Malthusian belts containing contraceptives, and repeat Malthusian drills to eliminate the possibility of pregnancy. Deliberately engineering sterility and compulsively using contraceptives directly oppose the Cultural Mandate. Contraceptives, therefore, are yet another method that Huxley engages with Christianity through direct opposition to Biblical instruction and ecclesiastical teaching.

Huxley foregrounds this opposition through John the Savage, whose conditioning on the Reservation has imbued him with a traditionally Christian view of courting and sexual conduct. “In Malpais,” John tells Lenina, “people get married,” a “horrible idea” in the World State (167, 168). John feels “bound by strong vows that had never been pronounced” (148), denouncing Lenina’s attempts to “melt mine honour into lust” (169). Taking precedent from the novel’s title, John references The Tempest, reinforcing John’s beliefs as anachronistic within the sexually saturated context of the World State. John denounces her a “whore,” an “impudent strumpet,” terms that presumably hold no semantic content for Lenina (170). Unable to reconcile his own sexuality with his ambiguous feelings towards Lenina, he explodes, whipping her whilst exclaiming “Strumpet!” and “Forgive me, God” (223). John has maintained and fulfilled the ‘savage’

title bestowed upon him, and through this Huxley emphasises the incompatibility of sexual promiscuity and Christian ideology that stipulates postmarital intercourse.

In Naked Lunch, all intercourse is similarly extramarital but what is more, it has been perverted through its commodification which, I argue, desacralises the human body as well as foregrounding pleasure as a legitimate pursuit. This commodification is best demonstrated through the bio-political economy of the Interzone, “The Composite City where all human potentials are spread out in a vast silent market” (96). Mirroring the International Zone of early 1950s Tangier both in function and composition, the Interzone is a composite of illicit marketplaces that exist within real world cities; a hellish urban landscape “where the unknown past and the emergent future meet in vibrating soundless hum” (99). Jeffrey Weeks, writing in Sexuality and Its Discontents, hints at this confrontation of “past” and “future,” aligning the “commoditisation and commercialisation” of “sexual mores” with the framework of capitalist growth (22-23). This growth, he attests, came not in the form of traditional prostitution but rather “the growth of pornocracy” which “was based on tendencies implicit in capitalism,” chiefly “the expansion of perceived sexual needs” (23). The fundamental trend, Weeks attests, was that it “provided the possibility for the commoditisation of pleasure” (24). This “commoditisation of pleasure” reflects the “no leisure from pleasure” philosophy of the World State, and is best reflected through the “vibrating soundless hum” of “sex and commerce” that “shakes the Zone like a vast hive” (162). The “hive” suggests (re-)production, “since the rooms are mostly bed where the business of the Zone is transacted,” and the “business” here is rooted in capitalist expansion. Whilst Burroughs differs from Weeks in the type of sexual services for sale, both address the “commoditisation of pleasure,” with the ultimate emphasis on the body as the site of sexual exploitation. I argue that through the commodification of sex in the Interzone, Burroughs engages with the sanctity of the human body purported by Christianity, whilst also exemplifying the concupiscence of postlapsarian man through an entire economy underpinned by extramarital sexual intercourse.

HOMOSEXUALITY

In this next section, I will discuss the homophobic cultural context to which Burroughs responds, and then explore homoerotic depictions within Naked Lunch. The central premise is the perception that homosexuality is in contention with Christian doctrine, yet John Boswell, an historian who specialised in the relationship between homosexuality and

Christianity, argues that despite “misleading English translations which may imply the contrary, the word ‘homosexual’ does not occur in the Bible: no extant text or manuscript, Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, or Aramaic, contains such a word … nor did any languages have such a term before the late nineteenth century” (92). Despite this, the Catholic Church, comprising over one billion people, to this day officially regards all sexual acts not open to procreation as sinful by violating natural law. Homosexuality, therefore, similar to other forms of promiscuity already discussed, reflects human concupiscence. The most explicit Bible verse purportedly advocating homophobia is Leviticus 18.22–23, which states: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion.” Whilst this seems relatively direct in its admonishment, Biblical scholars such as Michael Coogan, in God and Sex: What the Bible Really Says, argues that the juxtaposition of homoeroticism and bestiality signifies a Holiness Code designed not to instruct against homoerotic relations but rather as a method to keep categories separate, just as the Bible instructs not to “sow thy field with mingled seed” (Leviticus 19:19). I wish to emphasise that not only is homoerotic discrimination absent in the Biblical text proper, it actually directly opposes the Bible’s instruction to love those who are different. ‘Christian’ teachings of homosexual discrimination, I suggest, are temporally constructed. This can be seen in the absence of the word ‘homosexual,’ which only first entered the lexicon in the nineteenth century. Therefore, to avoid anachronisms, when discussing the Bible I will use ‘homoeroticism.’ The meaning is largely the same yet I do this to underscore the absence of ‘homosexual’ in the Bible and therefore undermine homophobia based on Christianity.

My premise for this final section is that the text engages with Christianity through the medium of the state, which Burroughs presents as the ultimate oppressive force in the restriction of civil liberties. Fundamental to this premise is the implication that the state and its legislators were homophobic, and that this homophobia stemmed from Christianity. As established, there is nothing in the Vulgate to suggest that homoeroticism is contrary to Christianity; homophobia has, therefore, been later constructed and read into the Bible. Lacking biblical support for the admonishment of homosexuals, I suggest that the textual engagement with Christianity derives from the cultural context as opposed to direct Biblical reference. This context was a time of increasing church membership, with the percentage of Americans who belonged to a church climbing from forty-nine percent in 1940 to fifty-seven percent in 1950 before peaking at sixty-nine percent by the end of the decade (Kruse xv). In President Eisenhower’s acceptance

speech at the 1952 Republican Convention, he promised that his presidential campaign would be a “great crusade for freedom,” later confiding in his close friend Reverend Billy Graham, a popular evangelical preacher at the time, “we need a spiritual renewal” (199). This sounds encompassing but was really geared towards (Judeo-)Christianity: in 1953, Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and members of cabinet signed a document that declared the United States government to be founded on Biblical principles; a year later, Congress added the phrase “under God” to the previously secular Pledge of Allegiance; in 1955, the phrase “In God We Trust” was added to paper money, before becoming the nation’s first official motto in 1956 (Kruse xiii). Clearly, there was a deliberate conflation of Christianity and state.

During this period of increasing church membership and decreasing secularisation there was heightened focus on sexuality. In 1948, sexologist Alfred Kinsey published his seminal study of Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male, which attested that thirty-seven per cent of American males surveyed had at least one homosexual experience (656). That same year, Congress passed the first sodomy law in the District of Columbia, which holds nominally Biblical origins. According to Biblical narrative, Sodom and Gomorrha were destroyed by divine retribution for “giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh” (Jude 1:7). This has variably been construed as the consequence of homoeroticism or impenitent sin, and as such the ‘sodomy law’—specifically relating to anal penetration—already implies sinful transgression within Christianity. As such we can see that regardless of the Biblical text (and in part owing to its ambiguity), the cultural context perceived homosexuality as sinful—and it was now unlawful too. America experienced what Andrew Ross has famously termed, “the Cold War culture of germophobia” (45). Inherent within “germophobia” is the fear of the unknown, undetectable Other, and this pertained to homosexuals as much as communists, with the ‘Lavender Scare’ complementing the Red Scare of McCarthyism. On April 27, 1953, within the first year of his presidency, Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450, which established “sexual perversion” as grounds for the dismissal of federal employees.

I hope to have established the relationship between homosexuality, Christianity, and state. I also hope to have demonstrated this relationship as tenuous, with the principle Christian objections deriving from the cultural context as opposed to Biblical instruction. Now I have established homosexuality as significant in both the governmental and cultural spheres, and that these spheres are predominantly Christian, I can reasonably argue that Burroughs’ engagement with the governmental and societal oppression of homosexuals was at least in part due to Christianity. There are two areas of

engagement I would like to explore: first, the character of the Mugwump, who embodies the ultimate sexual predator in his violent and coercive modes of homosexual intercourse. This, I argue, represents state oppression of homosexuals and state attempts to legislate ‘normality’ therein. Depictions of homosexual intercourse are frequently violent and their materiality is emphasised, denying any possibility of transcendence. Second, the ‘cure’ treatments of Dr Benway engages with contemporary psychoanalytical discourse that perceived homosexuality to be a mental illness in need of treatment. The existence of ‘conversion therapy’ suggests that homosexuality was an ailment and required ‘curing,’ taking precedent from the mis-association of homophobia and Christianity.

State subjugation of homosexuals in relation to Christianity is best encapsulated through the Rumpus Room sequence, which involves the public hanging of young boys. The boy is raped immediately before his hanging by a “Mugwump,” Burroughs’ post-human caricature of the ultimate sexual predator, a monster physically transformed by drug addiction secreting addictive life-prolonging fluid from their penises that delays ageing. The Mugwump not only rapes and murders a young boy, all possibility of transcendence is denied by the incessant materiality of Burroughs’ description:

Holding him by both pinioned elbows, propels him up the steps and under the noose. He stands in front of the boy holding the noose in both hands. The boy looks into Mugwump eyes black as obsidian mirrors, pools of black blood, glory holes in a toilet wall closing on the Last Erection. (68)

Burroughs puns on divine and sexual connotations of “glory” through conjunction to a further pun through “Last Erection” on the apocalyptic ‘Last Judgement’ featured throughout the Gospel of Matthew and the Book of Revelation. The apocalyptic warnings contained within these Biblical texts are transferred to the eyes of the Mugwump, as the “glory hole” closes with the youth’s “Last Erection.” This link is confirmed as the Mugwump “snaps the boy’s neck,” killing the youth (70). Here, Burroughs conflates death, materiality and orgasm, referencing his “atrophied preface” that explains, “we see God through our assholes in the flash bulb of orgasm … Through these orifices transmute your body. The way OUT is the way IN.” “Clearly he is also satirising the addiction to transgressive desire,” writes Fiona Paton in an essay that unifies homosexuality with monstrous rhetoric in 1950s America (50). Through Burroughs’ linking of spiritual and sexual fulfilment, he demonstrates an innately human desire to transcend the physical that is the final goal of sex and drug use, as well as Christianity. The relationship between drug use and transcendence, and the potential of drugs possessing religious import, will be discussed further in the following chapter. Here, I merely wish to highlight that the

engagement with notions of transcendence takes place in the novel’s depictions of sex. Not only is the depiction of homosexual relations here violent, non-consensual and steeped in death, but it also perverts Christian prophetic beliefs whilst denying spiritual transcendence. This perversion and engagement, I suggest, fixes the boy in his materiality, the only glimpse of transcendence is in the implication of an orgasm as his “whole body squeezes out through his cock” as his life force is reduced to ejaculate on the floor. The dematerialising effect of death and orgasm are replaced by bodily excretion, reducing the human body and soul to baseness.

In 1956, Edmund Bergler published Homosexuality: Disease or Way of Life, a text that has since been regarded as exemplifying the consensus regarding homosexuality and psychoanalytical theory in the 1950s. Mark Jordan recognises that the text is not just still “discussed in journals of pastoral counselling,” but copies “still survive in many seminary libraries” (40). In Bergler’s egregious text, he describes homosexuality as “a serious social problem,” characterising homosexual men as sexually promiscuous and refuting Kinsey’s thirty-seven per cent statistic as “fantastically exaggerated” (11, 7). It is in many ways an attempt by authority to justify its own discrimination. “Today,” argues Bergler, “psychiatric-psychoanalytic treatment can cure homosexuality,” working under the assumption “there are no healthy homosexuals” (9). In Dr Benway, and his work in Annexia ‘curing’ homosexuals, Burroughs parodies Bergler’s contention of homosexuality as an ailment:

“You can make a square heterosex citizen queer with this angle ... that is, reinforce and second his rejection of normally latent homosexual trends—at the same time depriving him of cunt and subjecting him to homosexual stimulation. Then drugs, hypnosis, and –” Benway flipped a limp wrist. (26)

Whilst psychological conditioning to manipulate an individual’s sexuality is ethically problematic, it also references the social pressures for homosexuals to change their sexuality. Burroughs inverts the roles so a “heterosex citizen” becomes homosexual, allowing the heterosex readership to realise the absurdity of inverting one’s own sexuality. Dr Benway’s practices here not only engages with Christianity through socially constructed homophobia, he also manipulates the subject’s free will, which as established, is crucial to Christian understanding of Original Sin.

In this first chapter we have explored how the texts engage with ecclesiastical teaching concerning sexual reproduction as well as stipulating proper modes of sexual intercourse. This involved the division of the indivisible individual, threatening notions of the soul. The conditioning of the Bokanovsky Process engaged with the predestination of

Calvinist doctrine, whilst citizens’ postnatal conditioning and Dr Benway further jeopardised notions of divinely ordained free will. The restriction of intercourse until marriage was demonstrated through theologically precedent, whilst all forms of intercourse are extramarital in these texts. In Brave New World, citizens are conditioned to fulfil both of the OED’s definitions of ‘fornication’: extramarital intercourse and idolatry. The Interzone is an entire economy based around extramarital sex, though it may be homosexual in nature and therefore not ‘fornication.’ The absence of ‘homosexual’—or variations therein—in the Bible was discussed, before providing a history of the relationship between Christianity, state, and homosexuality. The Mugwump was presented as the ultimate sexual predator, standing as metaphor for state subjugation of homosexuals whilst the materiality of the boy’s death reaffirms the denial of transcendence found elsewhere in the text. Next, I will discuss drugs in relation to these texts, outlining the historic association between entheogenic drugs and religion whilst demonstrating “junk” and “soma” as attempts to mainline transcendence which are invariably doomed to fail.

CHAPTER TWO: DRUGS

In his ‘Letter from a Master Addict to Dangerous Drugs,’ published in the British Journal of Addiction, Burroughs writes, “The addict needs morphine to maintain a morphine metabolism, and so avoid the excruciatingly painful return to a normal metabolism” (216). This is a dialectic of necessity, one compelled by physiology, and one that encapsulates the materiality of harmful forms of drug taking. I argue that this is the crux for this second chapter, one defined by the transcendent expectations of the user in the drug’s ability to deflect adversity that would usually induce Christian sentiment, injuring the user physically and spiritually as the dependence removes free will, impairing potential unity with God. Burroughs focuses upon the materiality of addiction, upon the “needs” and “excruciatingly painful return” to normality, exposing the reality of this “way of life” and its underlying physiological effects that undermines romantic promises of transcendent bliss. The effect, I suggest, serves to actually warn against drug addiction that divorce the user from the divine by means of numbing, control, or physical and spiritual injury. This holds true for soma in Brave New World, with the principle effect the deflection of negative feeling. Whilst soma provides no metabolic addiction, the psychologically numbing effects are such that one feels no necessity of God, revealing that God, and Christianity, require suffering to maintain their relevance.

The relationship between drug use and religion predates Christianity by millennia, with psychotropic drugs arguably present in Neolithic cave drawings, fundamental to Terrance Mckenna’s ‘Stoned ape’ theory of evolution, and integral in generating “the idea of an afterlife” from the otherwise “dormant minds of men, causing them to think of things they had never thought before” (Bernard 584, 586). These texts, along with Graham Hancock’s, The Divine Spark, emphasise the role of specifically psychedelic drugs in the expansion of consciousness and species, crucial to our progression from homo erectus to homo sapiens. However, with the comparatively recent growth of Abrahamic religions and their dominance within Western cultures, drug use and its criminalisation has become antithetical to religious piety, denounced in Christian substance abuse rehabilitation as merely an attempt “to fill a spiritual void” (McCoy 2). Meanwhile, shamanistic religions, such as those found in the Amazon Basin, form their worship around psychedelic drug use, chiefly ayahuasca, whose active component dimethyltryptamine produces hallucinations that reportedly enable communication with deities and spirit entities (Strassman). Ayahuasca has been repressed by European civilisation since the Catholic Church “condemned the use of plant hallucinogens by the native people of the New

World” in 1616 (Labate and Cavnar vii). Use of hallucinogenic plants within these communities “for purposes of healing, divination, and cultural cohesion was virtually eliminated,” establishing a precedent of drug oppression that exists in modern day U.S. scheduling laws (vii). Historically there is a clear opposition between Christianity, whose belief system is used as a form of rehabilitation from drugs, and shamanistic religions, who use drugs as a form of spiritual rehabilitation. The two meet in ayahuasca, whose therapeutic benefits produce a higher rate of successful rehabilitation of drug addicts than any other synthetic and psychological forms provided by traditional Western medicine (95-183). It is the drug Burroughs sought throughout South America for its promise of telepathic powers, concluding Junky with the proposition that yagé could be the “final fix,” “the kick that opens out instead of narrowing down” (166).

Drugs, like yagé, that are used as a means to facilitate communication with deities or spirits, have been termed ‘entheogens’ and shall be termed as such from here (Cole-Turner 46). Through this categorisation, however, I do not wish to refute the relationship between religion and the use of other drugs, but merely categorise the drugs that are typically associated with religion and spiritual experiences. “Junk” becomes a sort of religion for addicts, whilst soma is involved heavily in religious ceremonies within Brave New World. Burroughs’ proposal that yagé—or other entheogenic drugs—‘open out,’ I argue, runs in direct opposition to non-entheogenic drugs such as opiates that ‘narrow down.’ The context thus far has been circumventing the question, do drugs have religious import? Whilst the drug user’s conscious intention might not be towards God, I argue it is towards a form of transcendence, and this is supported by Huxley’s three-strata construct of self-transcendence. I wish to argue briefly here that all forms of downward self-transcendence are merely misdirected attempts to interact with the divine, an attempt to “fill a spiritual void” (McCoy 2). However, what is omitted in the Christian perception of drugs is that “a downward movement may sometimes be made the beginning of an ascent,” enabled through entheogenic drugs. Drugs, therefore, possess the potential of upward and downward self-transcendence, capable of 'opening out’ and ‘narrowing down’. The decision, in Christianity as in life, is which to choose.

Drugs and religion have not always been so disparate within Western culture, taking hold in post-Enlightenment Romantic poetry that idealised opium as a mainline route to sublimity and transcendence. William James’ seminal work, The Varieties of Religious Experience, linked altered states of consciousness to religion, with Philippe de Felice later offering a comprehensive history of drugs and religion in Poisons Sacres, Ivresses Divines. More recent scholarship, such as R. C. Zaehner’s Mysticism Sacred and

Profane, has “fully examined and refuted” the religious association of mescaline and religion outlined by Huxley in Doors of Perception. Elsewhere, “soma,” the name of the principle drug in Brave New World, has acquired Christian associations through scholarship that identifies it as the entheogenic mushroom, Amanita muscaria. John Marco Allegro effectively ended his career through his controversial text that made this association, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, which draws reference to numerous depictions of mushrooms in Christian imagery and suggests that early Christianity revolved around sex and the psychedelic use of this fungal species. Allegro allegedly plagiarised R. Gordon Wasson’s earlier text, Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality, which originally linked soma to the Amanita muscaria mushroom within Vedic cultures and also Siberian and Uralic tribesmen, emphasising the role of the mushroom in shamanistic rites and its role in religious ritual and formation. Wasson refrains from making any Christian association, as does Wendy O’Flaherty in her addendum that provides a post-Vedic history of soma use. I am inclined to do the same, especially since Allegro’s text was published nearly forty years after Huxley’s reference to soma in Brave New World. I mention the Vedic association firstly to establish a historic link between soma and religion, and Allegro’s Christian association merely as a point of interest and overlap. Another, if slightly dystopian, point of overlap is the adoption of the brand name ‘Soma’ for carisoprodol, a medicine prescribed for acute musculoskeletal pain, over twenty-five years after the publication of Brave New World. This modern therapeutic use of ‘soma’ holds more similarities with its Greek etymological origins, sōma, denoting ‘body,’ providing sedative effects.

Most recently for any Christian denomination associating with drugs, the Native American Church ingests the entheogenic peyote, which John Slotkin reports as inducing “visions, which may be of Christ Himself” (13). Again, this is relevant in its association to the Nahuatl name peyotl, a mescaline producing cactus that Huxley consumes in The Doors of Perception. Huxley relates, “I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation—the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence” (7). Huxley exposes peyotl as not merely mimicking the divine, but rather foregrounds it as a mechanism by which one can reveal the “divine source of all existence” that our “ordinary mode of consciousness” filters from our everyday perception (7, 5). However, in the Savage Reservation, “Mescal,” the active component of peyotl, serves as a method for Linda to escape the shame of “having a baby” (103). Drugs are shown as a method of deflecting emotion—in this case “shame.” Its efficacy is such that it “ought to be called soma; only it made you feel ill afterwards” (108). Like alcohol and other drugs that merely

deflect negative feeling, the deflection is transient; this deflection through peyotl, which in Huxley induced feelings of divinity, in Linda induces only stronger feelings of negativity: “it always made that awful felling of being ashamed much worse the next day” (103). Huxley therefore advocates drug use that, with the right intention, enables the user to perceive the divine. The intent is key, and the differentiation of intent is one of the ways in which soma and junk engage with Christianity, used as mechanisms to deflect adversity that would otherwise manifest in religious feeling.

Both Brave New World and Naked Lunch encapsulate the tentative relationship drugs hold with religion, Christianity and society as a whole. As established, drugs possess a therapeutic use and their religious import is determined by the social context, exemplified through the use of the entheogenic drug yagé in shamanistic cultures or the Peyotl of the Native American Church, as well as questionable associations between Christianity and the Amanita muscaria ‘soma’ mushroom. We have also established that other non-entheogenic drugs, including alcohol, “morphia and cocaine,” possess religious import in the form of Huxley’s downwards “self-transcendence.” These other drugs are perceived as being in confrontation with Christianity, despite the contradictions of alcohol ingestion within the Bible and Christian Communion practices. Assisted by the increasing anti-narcotic prohibitionist legislation of early twentieth century America, all drug use became counterposed to Christianity. But why?

I argue that there are three principle objections to Christianity: first, in junk, soma, and other drugs, we see an attempt to shortcut transcendence, or fill the absence of Christianity. Transcendence through drugs must be segregated from divine promises of transcendence that exist within the eschatology of Christian doctrine, for “mystical rapture is a gift of grace and as such can never be reduced to man's control” (Huston Smith 523). Transcendence through drugs, therefore, can only mildly mimic true transcendence and the Beatific vision. This manifests in the banal depiction of heroin in Naked Lunch, and the inexorable return to reality that mars aspirations of transcendence in junk and soma. Second, in this endeavour to shortcut transcendence we see an attempt to escape the user’s reality and deflect the adversity of their sober conscious experience. In this deflection one prevents spiritual growth and closeness to God. The Bible teaches that in the face of adversity, “Fear thou not; for I  am  with thee: be not dismayed; for I  am  thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness” (Isaiah 41:10). This argumentation is predicated upon human existence as one of essential suffering, one in which the everyday negativity stemming from existential angst severely outweighs the good. The natural human inclination is to