Background

Psychic, social, and cosmic effects of LP are not absolute, but rather are conditioned by preexisting individual or collective preconceptions, models, strategies, beliefs, and representations, already deeply embedded within psychic, social, and cosmic systems. At the individual level, such embeddings are inculcated from childhood along with language, and scarcely perceived as such until brought into juxtaposition with something completely different. (At the social level, such embeddings are typically known as "culture", flowing as a wave from one generation to the next, transmitted primarily through oral and behavioral patterns.)

This "clash" triggers the shift from implicit (doxic) to explicit (discursive)knowledge, and the crystallization of ideology. The very concept of a distinctive "religion" (or "music") typically arises only as a result of such clashes, following which new ideological structures (theology) are accompanied by new institutional ones (a church); for instance in many societies (African, Indigenous) the existence of a "religion" is an etic construct, whereas the local worldview is more holistic - there may be no sharp boundaries between "religion" and other aspects of life (healing, teaching), just as there may be no sharp boundaries between "music", "dance", and spirituality generally.

Different authors have described such embedded knowledge (factual or procedural) differently, e.g.:

• Habitus (sociologist Pierre Bourdieu)
• World view and ethos (anthropologist Clifford Geertz)

The important point to remember is that LP action never takes place as in accordance with a physical law (e.g. performing drumming at a certain rate of beats per second causes trance) but always as mediated by individual or collective models, against which performance takes on a particular meaning and power. All reponses to LP are shaped by such background.