In the modern west, the dazzling visions generated by mescaline laid the foundations for psychedelic art. In non-western cultures, the mescaline-containing cacti have generated their own distinctive visual traditions. Using rarely seen images, Mike Jay surveys the long history of mescaline-related art: from the Huichol of tribal Mexico to the Native American Church, from surrealism and the avant-garde to the emergence of modern psychedelic tropes in the 1950s. In the process he considers what we mean by psychedelic art, and how it relates to the experience that underlies it.

Mescaline was the original psychedelic: the term was coined by Aldous Huxley and Humphry Osmond after Huxley's first trip in 1953. But it had already played many roles throughout history and around the globe. Since the 1890s its hallucinogenic properties had been described in detail by western scientists, artists and philosophers; and the cacti from which it was derived, peyote and huachuma (San Pedro), had been used in indigenous American cultures for millennia. Mike Jay surveys mescaline's epic journey, and its impact across modernity from psychology to art, medicine to counterculture.