Links For The Occult Rejects
https://linktr.ee/theoccultrejects
Occult Research Institute
https://www.occultresearchinstitute.org/
Substack
https://substack.com/@theoccultrejects?r=7auau0&utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page
Cash App
https://cash.app/$theoccultrejects
Venmo
@TheOccultRejects
Buy Me A Coffee
buymeacoffee.com/TheOccultRejects
Patreon
https://www.patreon.com/TheOccultRejects
Part 1 focuses on the drum as an ancient technology of altered consciousness. The argument is not that every beat causes trance, or that neuroscience has proven spirits. The stronger argument is that rhythm enters the human organism through hearing, motor prediction, breath, movement, attention, emotion, expectation, culture, and social synchrony. The drum becomes powerful when sound, body, group, ritual frame, and meaning converge. These sources support the archaeology, neuroscience, EEG research, shamanic studies, possession studies, Indigenous and culturally specific drum traditions, ritual theory, placebo and meaning-response research, ceremonial magic, and modern witchcraft material used in the episode.
Core Academic and Scientific Sources
Huels, Emma R., Hyoungkyu Kim, UnCheol Lee, Tirsa Bel-Bahar, Ana V. Colmenero, Alexandra Nelson, Stefanie Blain-Moraes, George A. Mashour, and Richard E. Harris. “Neural Correlates of the Shamanic State of Consciousness.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 15 (2021): 610466.
Gordon, Yoel, Golan Karvat, Noa Dagan, and Ayelet N. Landau. “Neural Tracking at Theta Predicts Drumming-Induced Altered States of Consciousness.” Scientific Reports 16, no. 1 (2026): Article 10204.
Aparicio-Terrés, R., et al. “The Neurobiology of Altered States of Consciousness Induced by Drumming and Other Rhythmic Sound Patterns.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2025.
Neher, Andrew. “Auditory Driving Observed with Scalp Electrodes in Normal Subjects.” Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology 13 (1961): 449–451.
Neher, Andrew. “A Physiological Explanation of Unusual Behavior in Ceremonies Involving Drums.” Human Biology 34, no. 2 (1962): 151–160.
Maurer, R., V. K. Kumar, L. Woodside, and R. J. Pekala. “Phenomenological Experience in Response to Monotonous Drumming and Hypnotizability.” American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis 40, no. 2 (1997): 130–145.
Use for monotonous drumming, subjective altered experience, imagery, absorption, and hypnotizability.
Maxfield, Melinda C. “Effects of Rhythmic Drumming on EEG and Subjective Experience.” PhD diss., Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, 1990.
Use as older supporting context on drumming, EEG, imagery, body-image changes, and subjective altered experience. Do not make this the main scientific proof; use it as background.
Nozaradan, Sylvie, Isabelle Peretz, and André Mouraux. “Tagging the Neuronal Entrainment to Beat and Meter.” The Journal of Neuroscience 31, no. 28 (2011): 10234–10240.
Use for EEG evidence that the brain can track beat and meter. This supports the claim that the brain does not merely hear rhythm as background sound; it can represent rhythmic structure in measurable ways.
Nozaradan, Sylvie. “Exploring How Musical Rhythm Entrains Brain Activity with Electroencephalogram Frequency-Tagging.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 369, no. 1658 (2014).
Use as broader rhythm/EEG entrainment support. This helps explain frequency-tagging, beat tracking, meter, neural entrainment, and the measurable relationship between rhythmic structure and brain activity.
Thaut, Michael H., Gerald C. McIntosh, and Volker Hoemberg. “Neurobiological Foundations of Neurologic Music Therapy: Rhythmic Entrainment and the Motor System.” Frontiers in Psychology 5 (2015).
Use for rhythm as motor-system timing information. This supports the claim that a beat can become bodily instruction, not just sound for the ear. Especially useful when discussing rhythmic auditory stimulation, motor planning, gait, entrainment, and the auditory-motor bridge.
Ross, Jessica M., John R. Iversen, and Ramesh Balasubramaniam. “Time Perception for Musical Rhythms: Sensorimotor Perspectives on Entrainment, Simulation, and Prediction.” 2022.
Use for rhythm, timing, prediction, sensorimotor entrainment, and the way musical rhythm interacts with time perception.
Hove, Michael J., and Jane L. Risen. “It’s All in the Timing: Interpersonal Synchrony Increases Affiliation.” Social Cognition 27, no. 6 (2009): 949–960.
Use for synchrony and social bonding. This helps support the group-body argument: moving or acting in time with others can increase affiliation.
Wiltermuth, Scott S., and Chip Heath. “Synchrony and Cooperation.” Psychological Science 20, no. 1 (2009): 1–5.
Use for the claim that synchronized movement can increase cooperation and attachment among participants.
Tarr, Bronwyn, Jacques Launay, and Robin I. M. Dunbar. “Music and Social Bonding: ‘Self-Other’ Merging and Neurohormonal Mechanisms.” Frontiers in Psychology 5 (2014): 1096.
Use for music, synchrony, bonding, endorphin/social mechanisms, and why group rhythm can feel like more than private listening.
Fancourt, Daisy, Rosie Perkins, Sara Ascenso, Louise Atkins, Fatima Kilfeather, and Aaron Williamon. “Effects of Group Drumming Interventions on Anxiety, Depression, Social Resilience and Inflammatory Immune Response among Mental Health Service Users.” PLOS ONE 11, no. 3 (2016): e0151136.
Use for modern group-drumming research showing psychological and physiological effects, including anxiety, depression, social resilience, wellbeing, and inflammatory immune response. Use carefully: this does not make group drumming a cure-all. It supports the more grounded claim that embodied rhythm and group participation can affect mood, social connection, and body chemistry.
Bittman, Barry B., et al. “Composite Effects of Group Drumming Music Therapy on Modulation of Neuroendocrine-Immune Parameters in Normal Subjects.” Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine 7, no. 1 (2001): 38–47.
Use as older supporting material on group drumming and neuroendocrine-immune measures. Keep secondary. Fancourt is cleaner for the main script body.
Archaeology and Deep History of Drums
Lawergren, Bo. “Neolithic Drums in China.” In Music Archaeology in China. 2006.
Use for clay drums in Neolithic China and the deep-history claim that drums are not just poetic symbols of antiquity. They appear in the archaeological record as instruments tied to early sound-making, ceremony, and social order.
Both, Arnd Adje. “Music Archaeology: Some Methodological and Theoretical Considerations.”
Use as general support for why ancient instruments should be treated as ritual and social evidence, not merely decorative objects.
Anthropology, Ethnomusicology, Ritual, and Trance
Rouget, Gilbert. Music and Trance: A Theory of the Relations Between Music and Possession. Translated by Brunhilde Biebuyck. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
Essential source. Use for the caution that music does not mechanically or universally cause trance. Rouget helps keep the argument academically serious by emphasizing culture, ritual frame, meaning, and expectation.
Becker, Judith. Deep Listeners: Music, Emotion, and Trancing. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.
Use for music-linked trancing, emotional absorption, religious experience, and culturally trained ways of listening. This supports the “hearing versus entering” distinction.
McNeill, William H. Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.
Use for marching, dance, drill, muscular bonding, synchronized movement, and rhythm as social glue. This is useful both for Part 1’s group-body material and Part 2’s war-drum material.
Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964.
Use carefully. Eliade’s phrase “archaic techniques of ecstasy” is powerful, but the episode should also note that later scholarship criticizes his tendency to universalize shamanism.
Winkelman, Michael. Shamanism: A Biopsychosocial Paradigm of Consciousness and Healing. 2nd ed. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010.
Use for shamanism as a ritual technology involving altered consciousness, healing, social integration, symbolism, and body-brain processes.
Winkelman, Michael. “Shamanism and Psychedelics: A Biogenetic Structuralist Paradigm of Ecopsychology.” European Journal of Ecopsychology 4 (2013): 90–115.
Use as supplemental background on shamanism, altered consciousness, and comparative models of trance and visionary states.
Kontouli, Athanasia, Michael J. Hove, Alexandre Lehmann, Peter Vuust, and Peter E. Keller. “The Rhythms of Trance: Cultural Phenomenology and Neural Mechanisms of Music-Induced Lewis-Williams, David. The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 2002.
Use cautiously for altered states, entoptic imagery, ritual vision, and the relationship between neuropsychology and symbolic culture.
Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness.” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 2026.
Use for the bridge between cultural phenomenology and neuroscience. This supports the point that music-induced trance is not only acoustics; it involves body, training, expectation, culture, environment, and interpretation.
Tart, Charles T., ed. Altered States of Consciousness. New York: Wiley, 1969.
Use as classic altered-state background.
Hultkrantz, Åke. “The Drum in Shamanism.”
Use for classic comparative material on the shamanic drum, especially Arctic, Siberi
Also want to remind people about the website, if you're into reading we have tons of information by multiple contributors, and we got t-shirts up on the site if you're interested. Fun fact, the art is all based on the eyeball. A
Netherlands