Rock Art or Rorschach: Is there More to Entoptics than Meets the Eye?

Abstract

The recourse to entopic phenomena as an explanation of certain geometric rock-art imagery has generated considerable debate among archaeologists and anthropologists of consciousness, and even among neuropsychologists, to a lesser degree. Surprisingly little has been discussed concerning the philosophical location of this debate in relation to the mind-body problem of consciousness, however, and a new perspective presented here on the experience of form constants challenges current thinking. Considering the neuropsychological-shamanistic theory of Paleolithic rock art in light of visionary experiences among both the blind and the sighted, and under different states of altered consciousness, an argument is presented that form constants are not actually entopic as they are currently defined, that is, made within the eye and the visual cortex. It is suggested that the entoptic rock-art model is swayed by philosophical biases that force theorists to see what they want to see, somewhat like a Rorschach ink blot test, when, rather, it actually appears that there may be more to entoptics than meets the eye.

Keywords:

• entoptics
• rock art
• visual perception
• psychedelic
• shamanism