Awe-inspiring experiences and aesthetic rituals can produce deep shifts in how people know the world, and these shifts often intersect with power structures. Examining cases from Amazonian shamanic rituals to ancient Egyptian temple arts, Surrealist dream experiments, transpersonal psychology, and science-fiction cyberculture reveals a common thread: a 'politics of consciousness' in which altered states and symbolic systems shape individual and collective worldviews, entwining spiritual mythos, realpolitik, and sociotechnical imaginaries. Sacred art-ritual ecologies and modern media techniques serve as architectures of transformation. Technologically mediated awe can both elevate and undermine human freedom. Rituals of awe function as tools of epistemic change and sites of political contestation over the human spirit.
Non-ordinary states of consciousness (NOSC) such as those induced by ayahuasca, lucid dreams, and holotropic breathing do not increase creativity in the individual creator. Instead, they influence and assist the themes artists pursue, which can be mistaken for enhanced creativity and is better understood as a choice to follow a specific subject. This conclusion comes from a doctoral research project that analyzed comics by Moebius, Jim Woodring, Rick Veitch, Sergio Macedo, and Xalberto, along with the author's own prior work, using art-based research combined with autoethnography. As a poetic outcome, 16 collaborative comic stories were created within the scope of Visionary Art, and their creative processes were discussed in relation to cognitive processes and typical psychological states of NOSC.