Levels 1–8B, translated

Every forum thread borrows the same eight-level vocabulary — “that was level 8B geometry” — and none of them say what you would actually be looking at. The ladder is deliberately abstract because it has to cover every psychedelic. This page maps it onto the specific, named, cited phenomena people report on DMT.

The eight levels and the 8A/8B fork are PsychonautWiki’s (CC BY-SA). The phenomena and citations are the Atlas’s. The mapping between them is ours — a reading, not a claim PsychonautWiki makes.

Visual noise

The grain that is there when you close your eyes stone sober — visual snow, eigengrau, stray light under the lids. The bottom of the ladder is not a drug effect at all.

Atlas phase · Onset

TV Static & the Signal-Noise TransitionThe grainy, shimmering field of fine dots — 'visual snow' or 'TV static' — that appears at the very threshold and again on the ret

Motion and color

The static starts moving and takes on colour. Surfaces begin to breathe.

Atlas phase · Onset

Breathing & Liquid SurfacesAt and around threshold, ordinary surfaces begin to breathe, ripple, melt and flow — walls pulsing in and out, floors rolling in s
Impossible ColorsColors reported as lying outside the ordinary gamut — hues that 'don't exist,' self-luminous, hyper-saturated, or described as com

Partially defined geometry

Shapes resolve out of the noise but stay unfinished — filigree over surfaces, the four universal form-constants that recur across every hallucinogen.

Atlas phase · Onset

Static Pattern Overlay & filigreeUniform or random surfaces taking on a clearly visible pattern — arabesques, hieroglyphs, plants, animals and faces — plus spirals
Klüver Form Constants (the geometric spine)The four universal geometric templates that recur across nearly all reported psychedelic and hallucinatory vision, and which under

Fully defined geometry

The pattern closes into complete, symmetrical, self-similar structure. On DMT this is the door everyone describes by name.

Atlas phase · The Chrysanthemum

The ChrysanthemumThe classic onset mandala — a gigantic, often spinning, kaleidoscopic fractal flower with a domelike appearance that turns into a
Mandalas & symmetry fieldsRadially symmetric, concentric closed-eye geometric forms — the chrysanthemum is the canonical instance, but mandalic patterning r
Fractal lattices & jeweled tilingsNested, self-similar fractal patterning and tessellating tilings saturating every surface — jeweled, crystalline, gridwork lattice
Ultra-Detail & Infinite ResolutionThe pervasive sense that the visual field has been 'upgraded to HD' and then far beyond — edges sharper than physically possible,

3-Dimensional geometry

The pattern gains volume — objects rather than wallpaper, with depth, texture and impossible solid geometry.

Atlas phase · The Rush → Breakthrough

Hyper-dimensional objectsImpossible solids that exceed 3D — rotating hypercubes (tesseracts), self-assembling jeweled objects ('Fabergé eggs from Mars'), c
Dimensional Layering & Space-FoldingThe perception that space has extra dimensions and is being folded, stacked, sheeted or turned inside-out — rooms that fold over a
Tactile Geometry (Felt Textures)Geometry that is not only seen but felt — surfaces with palpable texture, and a repertoire of bodily sensations: waves of tingling

Partially overriding visual perception

Geometry starts replacing the room rather than decorating it. Faces surface out of the pattern; the rush and the aperture belong here.

Atlas phase · The Rush → Through the Membrane

Embedded Faces & the Pareidolia CascadeFaces — and, more broadly, eyes, figures and creatures — that resolve out of the geometric field itself, so that the pattern is 'l
Zooming / Rushing Tunnel FlightThe 'rush': an overwhelming sensation of acceleration and forward (or upward) motion — being pulled, sucked, launched or elevatore
The Aperture / Iris OpeningA recurring threshold image: the spinning onset mandala or a central point dilates open like a camera iris, a flower unfurling, a

Fully overriding visual perception

The external world is gone. The body boundary goes with it, and vision stops being a forward-facing window.

Atlas phase · Breakthrough → Arrival

Body Dissolution & Merging with the GeometryThe felt boundary of the body loosening and dissolving — flesh 'unzipping' or breaking into waves, particles, light and vibration
Omnidirectional 360° VisionThe sense of seeing in all directions at once — a spherical, panoramic awareness with no back-of-the-head blind spot, as though vi
Hyperbolic Space & Negative CurvatureReports that DMT space is not merely full of shapes but is itself curved the 'wrong' way — saddle-shaped, warped, with far more su

Level 8 forks — and DMT goes one way

At the top the ladder splits into two states of equal intensity. Which one you get is substance-dependent, and PsychonautWiki puts DMT firmly on one side.

8A — Perceived exposure to semantic concept network

Physically stimulating psychedelics with less hallucinatory content — PsychonautWiki names LSD, 2C-B and 4-HO-MET.

No Atlas phenomenon is specific to this level.

8B — Perceived exposure to inner mechanics of consciousness

Sedating psychedelics with heavy hallucinatory content. PsychonautWiki names DMT here, with psilocybin, LSA and 2C-T-7 — so a DMT reader following this ladder lands on 8B specifically.

Living language / visible soundSynesthetic geometry in which heard sound becomes seen object — 'things heard become things seen.' McKenna's elves 'spoke in some
Alien Glyphs & Unreadable Writing SystemsDense inscriptions of symbols — hieroglyph-like, runic, circuit-like or wholly novel — covering surfaces, scrolling through the ai
Energy Conduits & Living CircuitryThe space rendered as flowing energy and machinery: luminous conduits, cables, circuit-board traces, pulsing veins of light, gears
Time Geometry — Moments as Objects & LoopsTime reported as spatialized, structured, or dissolved: moments experienced as objects one can inspect from outside, the felt sens

Why the two systems do not line up neatly

A level measures intensity; an Atlas phase measures sequence. They are different axes, which is why the mapping above is many-to-many rather than a straight list. The Chrysanthemum is level 4 by intensity but arrives second in the journey; living language is level 8B by intensity and arrives late. A phenomenon can also skip levels entirely — on a high dose people report going from level 2 to a breakthrough in seconds, which is exactly why dose-ladder descriptions written for slower psychedelics read oddly to DMT users.

All 24 phenomena The journey, in order