To update the 6th printing of my book, I'm trying to identify the
individual who allegedly participated in mescaline experiments in
Germany in the 1920s and later played a role in the creation of Walt
Disney's "Fantasia." A search of the Web has so far produced only
innuendo as far as any alleged Disney/psychedelic nexus.

On page 113 of the Third Edition of Peter Stafford's "Psychedelics
Encyclopedia" (1992), he writes: "One of his [Kurt Beringer's]
subjects became fascinated with trying to put the "furious succession"
of mescaline images on film; later, Walt Disney hired him as the chief
visualist for Fantasia." Unfortunately, Stafford does not identify
this "visualist" by name and has since forgotten where he came up with
this reference, though he apparently stands by it, as per a 1999
interview with the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic
Studies, arguably the premier advocacy organization for legal
psychedelic research in the world.

It appears that the phrase "furious succession" came from an article
Havelock Ellis wrote back in 1898 in reference to the phenomena of a
peyote episode undergone by an "unnamed Scottish art student." It's
unlikely though still possible that that art student went on to take
mescaline with Beringer in Germany in the 1920s and later to work for
Disney on "Fantasia," which was released some 42 years after the Ellis
article.

There are some who suspect that the German abstract artist Oscar
Fischinger (1900-1967), who helped conceptualize the Toccata and Fugue
sequence in "Fantasia," could be the man in question, but his daughter
told me in a February 2004 telephone coversation that her father had
expressed outrage when a visitor in the Sixties suggested he might
have been "on something" in order to have the inspiration to create
the way he did. She also said that he lived nearby to Timothy Leary
and didn't look kindly on his shenanigans. ("He didn't even drink!"
she said of her father.) She said she had never heard of Kurt
Beringer. Still, Fischinger was in Germany in the Twenties and could
possibly have gotten involved in Beringer's mescaline experiments in
his relative youth, in spite of postures toward the issue of
mind-altering substances later in life. Nonetheless, Fischinger's role
in "Fantasia" was minor, not necessarily one that could be
characterized as a "chief visualist." (The term "visualist" has not
yet come up in a search of related literature.

Ever since the early 1970s, when I was in high school ,I've gotten
wind of theories about the alleged Disney/psychedelic nexus, with all
manner of (perhaps wishful-thinking) folk claiming or assuming that
Disney artists were inspired by psychedelics to, e.g., featuring the
psychoactive red-capped Amanita muscaria mushroom prominently in "Snow
White," the synesthesia material in "Fantasia," and the hallucinatory
delirium scene in "Dumbo," among other features of Disney's art. (The
psychoactive potential of LSD was not discovered until 1943, after
"Snow White," "Dumbo," and "Fantasia" were made, so as far as
available, commonly known, and likely candidates for psychedelic
substances ingested by anybody back then, mescaline, first synthezied
at the end of the 19th century, is the best bet) But no one to my
knowledge has provided any documentary evidence or named any names. If
there is documentary evidence of any Disney artist being inspired by
an experience with a psychedelic drug, I'd love to see it.

To help me locate the documentary evidence I'm after, I have contacted
many prominent scholars and advocates in the so-called psychedelic
community and have thus far gotten no results.

If you can help me with this, there would be a lot of scholars and
constituents who'd be most gratified.

I could offer $25 to locate such information. Thank you for your
interest in helping to solve this mystery.