Archaic and medieval carnivals were annually occuring rites marking the end of the "old" (bad, negative, old, unwanted) and a beginning of the "new" (renewed, positive, reborn). Carnival used to be a special period of time between old and new times, when social hierarchies and norms of behaviour were temporarily suspended. Masks were worn to temporarily conceal people´s ethnic origin, gender, class position etc..., only to support the carnivalesque idea of the "time outside of time" when people together tested the arbitrary boundaries of the ordinary social world.
Russian literary theorist
Mikhail Bakhtin offered an influential book on renaissance carnival in his book "Rabelais and His World" (Indiana University Press, 1993). When I read this book, I was also quite intrigued by the similarity between carnival and a hyperspatial experience:
- masks used to mask something ("reality", "meaning"?)
- humor and cruelty (and other "opposites"
mixing together
- time outside of time, suspending ordinary reality
- carnivalesque swirling of forms, contents, colours and shapes
It was Terence McKenna, if I am not mistaken, who also poited out that the metaphor of carvival might be suitable for describing a DMT experience...