Psychedelic Religion

A deep study of the magical aspects of ritual, both anthropological, social as wel a psychological. Various models about how rituals works, how the mind deals with magic, how rituals help to overcome time and space limitations, can help in transformation. The importance of rituals as social, transformational, but also as magical acts. New theories about ritual efficacy, the nature of time, and how the mind deals with rituals. Endorsed by prof. Stan Krippner and Prof. Cees Hamelink. 820 pages, totally original vision on ritual.

The highly psychoactive molecule N,N -dimethyltryptamine (or simply DMT), is found naturally occurring in the brains of humans, mammals, and some other animals, as well as in a broad range of species of the plant kingdom. Although speculative, neurochemical research suggests that DMT may be made in the pineal gland, and it is hypothesised that, as much as melatonin helps activate sleep cycles, DMT activates dreaming, and may also be implicated in other natural visionary states such as mystical experience, near-death experience (NDE), spontaneous psi and psychosis. Amazonian shamans have made use of this chemical for its visionary properties for thousands of years, most likely, and take it as part of a decoction frequently called ayahuasca, which translates from Quechua as “vine of the spirits” or “vine of the dead”. The psychedelic brew is taken because it gives rise to extraordinary mental phenomena that have shamanic and supposed healing qualities, such as synaesthesia, ostensible extra-dimensional percepts, out-of-body experiences, psi experiences and perhaps most commonly, encounters with discarnate entities. When described by independent and seemingly naïve DMT participants the entities encountered tend to vary in detail but often belong to one of a very few similar types, with similar behavioural characteristics. For instance, mischievous shapeshifting elves, preying mantis alien brain surgeons and jewel-encrusted reptilian beings, who all seem to appear with baffling predictability. This opens up a wealth of questions as to the reality (i.e., the ontology) of these entities. The discussion of the phenomenology and ontology of these entities mixes research from parapsychology, ethnobotany and psychopharmacology – the fruits of science – with the foamy custard of folklore, anthropology, mythology, cultural studies and related disciplines. Hopefully however, given the varied readership of this journal, it won’t prove to be a trifle too interdisciplinary.

Terence McKenna argued that sovereignty over one’s consciousness is the next great civil rights struggle after sexism, racism, and homophobia. “Coming out” about one’s psychedelic identity, interests, and/or experiences is an important part of redefining the public perception of psychedelics and of those who choose to experience their effects. Even non-using “allies” (comparable to LGBTQ allies) can join the conversation in supportive roles. In light of the shifting legal status of psychoactive plants and chemicals, what might it mean to identify as psychedelic in a post-prohibition world?

Letcher, A. (2022, February). In the twinkling of an eye: A brief history of the magic mushroom. Invited talk for the Psychedelicacies Salon at the Viktor Wynd's Museum of Curiosities & Last Tuesday Society (online), 10th February. Hosted and curated by David Luke & Maya Bracknell Watson.

https://www.thelasttuesdaysociety.org/event/in-the-twinkling-of-an-eye-by-andy-letcher-on-zoom/

Entheogenic Plant Sentience – A private symposium. Tyringham Hall, September 2015. (Curator and compère)

Video trailer for the event: https://vimeo.com/156248371

Anton Bilton, Dr David Luke & Rory Spowers
Introduction from the hosts and curators

Dr Graham St John
The Pineal Enigma: The Dazzling Life and Times of the ‘Spirit Gland’

Dr Dennis J. McKenna
Is DMT a Chemical Messenger from an Extraterrestrial Civilization?

Dr Jeremy Narby
Amazonian Perspectives on Invisible Entities

Peter Meyer
Concerning the Nature of the DMT Entities and their Relation to Us

Dr Erik Davis
How to Think about Weird Beings

Dr Ede Frecska
The Second Foundation of Knowledge, True Visions, and Plant Sentience

Dr Andrew Gallimore
The Neurobiology of Conscious Interaction with Alternate Realities and Their Inhabitants

Dr Rupert Sheldrake
Morphic Resonance, Psychedelic Experiences and Collective Memory

Dr Rick Strassman
The Nature of the DMT Beings: Perspectives and Prospects

Graham Hancock
Psychedelics, Entities, 'Dark Matter' and Parallel Dimensions

Dr Rick Strassman
The Nature of the DMT Beings: Perspectives and Prospects

Dr David Luke
Entheogenic plant sentience and DMT entities: A summary of what we think we know

Julian Vayne  (29th September, 2010) – Drugs and Magic: The Chemicals of Chaos. The Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness Salon, The Institute of Ecotechnics, October Gallery, Bloomsbury, London. (Host and compère)

In this talk entitled 'The Chemicals of Chaos' Julian will introduce the heady brew that is bubbling in the cauldron of his next literary work. By exploring the Book of Nature, and privileging direct experience over scriptural knowledge, the magician, the artist and the scientist are all engaged in a radical project. This project is political dynamite, hence the necessity for secrecy and conspiratorial action. Chaos magic is an expression of this same drive for direct illumination, aiming as it does for gnosis through practices culled from many different spiritual traditions. The use of psychoactive chemicals are one such technique for plugging directly into the numinous that obviate the need for gods, guides or gurus, and this may be why both left and right wing governments want to see them banned.
So come and join in a mystical tour that starts in prehistory, shadows the story of the Knights Templar, hides in the Invisible College and finally bursts into view with the discovery of LSD. You have nothing to loose but your mind...

Strader, Katie M., Spirituality In the Time of COVID-19. Master of Fine Arts, Studio, Spring, 2020, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Spirituality In the Time of COVID-19 details my use of landscape as a transcendental force, how I am moving into installation to generate a phenomenological experience to share with the viewer and how the events surrounding the corona virus pandemic of 2019-20 affected this work. Through discussion of my work leading up to this semester and the historical use of landscape to depict spirituality and transcendence, I explore embedded, and inferred symbolism in Thomas Cole's work with my own. I describe moving from 2d landscape painting to abstracted immersive landscape installations and the relationship between the materials I use and subjects like motherhood, cultural expectations and aesthetics by comparing aspects of the

Graham Hancock (26th May, 2009) – Supernatural: Did psychedelic experiences make our ancestors human? The Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness Salon, The Institute of Ecotechnics, October Gallery, Bloomsbury, London. (Host and compère)

Modern technological societies value only the alert, problem-solving state of consciousness, and have demonised trance states brought on by the consumption of psychedelic drugs. But in his book Supernatural, the background to his talk at the October Gallery, Graham Hancock presents staggering new information that experiences induced by plant hallucinogens may have played a vital role in the evolution of our species – opening our ancestors to supernatural realms and making us truly human for the first time. It all happened very recently.

Less than 50,000 years ago mankind had no art, no religion, no sophisticated symbolism, no innovative thinking. Then, in a dramatic and electrifying change, described by scientists as ‘the greatest riddle in human history’, all the skills and qualities that we value most highly in ourselves appeared already fully formed, as though bestowed on us by hidden powers. In his lecture, Graham Hancock sets out to investigate this mysterious ‘before-and-after moment’ and to discover the truth about the influences that shaped the modern human mind. His quest takes him on a journey of adventure and detection from the stunningly beautiful painted caves of prehistoric France, Spain and Italy to remote rock shelters in the mountains of South Africa where he finds a treasure trove of extraordinary Stone Age art.

He uncovers clues that lead him to travel to the depths of the Amazon rainforest to drink the powerful plant hallucinogen Ayahuasca with Indian shamans, whose paintings contain images of ‘supernatural beings’ identical to the animal-human hybrids depicted in prehistoric caves and rock shelters. And Western laboratory volunteers placed experimentally under the influence of hallucinogens such as mescaline, psilocybin and LSD also report visionary encounters with exactly the same beings. Scientists at the cutting edge of consciousness research have begun to consider the possibility that such hallucinations may be real perceptions of other ‘dimensions’.

Could it be that the human brain is not just a generator of consciousness, but also a receiver of consciousness, and could the ‘supernaturals’ first depicted in the painted caves and rock shelters be the ancient teachers of mankind? This new approach strongly suggests that human evolution is not just the ‘blind’, ‘meaningless’ process that Darwin identified, but something else, more purposive and intelligent, that we have barely even begun to understand. By criminalising and demonising the consumption of psychedelic drugs it may even be that our societies are blocking off the next vital step in the evolution of our species.

Ibogaine is a hallucinogenic alkaloid, derived from Tabernanthe iboga, a plant unique to the rainforests of West Africa. Its traditional use as an epiphanic sacrament in local magico-religious practice inspired its appropriation by Western drug addicts by whom it is now hailed as both a catalyst of psychospiritual insight and an effective alleviator of cravings and withdrawal. While scientific and early clinical studies confirm its role in reducing physical withdrawal and craving, debate continues concerning the significance of its "visionary" properties. An analysis of many addicts' testimonies of recovery, however, places the visionary experience at center stage. I set out to understand mechanisms of transformation and healing, via a comparative phenomenological exploration of this experience, through the opposing lenses of psychoanalysis and cultural constructivism. I propose that at the heart of the healing encounter is a culturally shaped creative journey to an imaginal unspoilt state in personal or collective history. How this experience is recovered and integrated into life is critically considered. I argue a secular account is vital as the ibogaine scene strives toward social and medical legitimacy. If and how such a framework can sit alongside spontaneously emergent spiritual and religious idioms and experience will also be tentatively explored. k e y w o r d s : Ibogaine, social constructionism, psychoanalytic anthropology, phenomenology, neurophenomenology

Mike Crowley (30th October, 2012) - Stoned peacocks and blue-throated gods. The Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness Salon, The Institute of Ecotechnics, October Gallery, Bloomsbury, London. (Host and compère)


Video of lecture here:
https://vimeo.com/53116835

Drawing upon myth, folklore and Sanskrit word-play, Mike Crowley demonstrates that the peacock was used in both Hinduism and Buddhism as a symbol for psychedelic mushrooms, particularly those which bruise blue, such as Psilocybe cubensis. This hypothesis offers an explanation for the association of peacocks with amrita (the tantric psychedelic sacrament) and various deities (Amitabha, Mahamayuri, Janguli, et al.). It also may account for the curious name of a Shaiva monastic order known as matta-mayuri ("the intoxicated peacocks"). While this is the main focus of the talk, it may well provide a jumping-off point for other topics covered in the book Secret Drugs of Buddhism.

This chapter examines the relevance of multimedia technologies in Psychedelic Trance gatherings, exploring its technical, sensory and spiritual convergence. Technology devices have always been a part of our lives, from the first artefacts of early humanity to the most sophisticated of our era, where technology has taken control of some aspects of our lives. In the late twentieth century, a new stage of history characterized by the transformation of our material culture through mechanisms of a new technological paradigm started. We live in communion with all kinds of technologies that complement and extend us in most of our existential aspects, not only in a technical way but also a personal, emotional and even spiritual level. The electronic dance music and its relevance in modern cultures can be a reflexion of this reality, where new technologies and multimedia tools have awakened neo-ritual practices in Psychedelic Trance gatherings, evoking tribal experiences with shamanic foundations, and mediated by high-tech guide elements.

Transgression was the essence of the twentieth century avant-garde and the royal road to insight, self-transformation and special knowledge from Baudelaire to William Burroughs and beyond. In the 1960s psychedelic drugs became a touchstone of alterity and a key tool of a culture of resistance to the status quo, with an inherent aura of subversion, promising a positive transformation of the individual and society. However, has the transgressive now been commoditised and marketed back to us in the art, film and literature of excess, thus neutralising its transformative power? When psychedelics become NICE licensed medicines or approved for religious use will they have lost their mojo?

Filmed at Breaking Convention: 3rd International Conference on Psychedelic Consciousness, 10-12th July, 2015

This is the view on tripping you have been looking for. Not only describing the journey, but discussing the process, the psychological issues, the dangers, offering practical help, also for sitters and therapists, like a toolbox. Based on extensive personal and group setting experience, also with my friends like Albert, Hofmann, Terence McKenna, Timothy Leary, John Perry Barlow, Sasha Shulgin, and many other pioneers and luminaries.
It offers guidelines and unique insights and comparative data about ritual use of psychedelics, for therapy or self-discovery, with a critical view concerning recreational use, ayahasca tourism. It offers unique models, graphs and a structure for effective use of substances. Also a broad view on potential future use, legality and research possibilities.
A critical intruduction to responsible and transformational use of psychedelics, for first time users, experienced travellers, sitters and therapeutic purposes. The insights and suggestions are in many ways unconventional and not what the "official" research suggest, but more holistic, tackling issues like sex and body work, the dangers of group sessions and the general adverse commercialization of the whole scene. The various substances are covered, but also new approaches like the use of Virtual Reality in or connected to psychedelic sessions.

Master’s Thesis for the Western Esotericism programme at the University of Amsterdam which investigates the role of peyote in the Magick of Aleister Crowley and in the development of Thelema.

The content of this thesis supersedes the content of 'Aleister Crowley's magical use of Anhalonium Lewinii' a.k.a. 'The complexities of Aleister Crowley’s magical relationship with anhalonium lewinii'.

CLICK TO WATCH - Mystics, magicians, and shamans around the globe have been exploring chemically altered states for millennia and meticulously mapping the normally invisible landscapes of psychedelic consciousness. This presentation will examine some of the key maps, models, and metaphors that many contemporary psychonauts use to navigate and manipulate non-ordinary states of consciousness, including the I Ching, Tarot, alchemy, and ceremonial magick. It will discuss the central functions of these models of psychedelic experiences, namely: establishing ‘set & setting’, facilitating harm reduction, managing crises, and assisting post-experience integration. It will draw upon ideas from the works of several key authors in the field of both psychedelics and esotericism including: Aleister Crowley, Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, Robert Anton Wilson, and Terence McKenna.

Preface
Throughout all of Europe we find examples of folk-belief assigning special qualities to the seventh-born son or daughter of a family. At times these attributes were positive, at times negative. However, they always had a magical aura about them (Bloch [1924] 1983). For the most part, these beliefs have been written off as superstitious residue from times past and as a result little attention has been paid to documenting the concrete social practices associated with them. An exception to this tendency is the work of Marc Bloch, who in 1924, called attention to the supernatural powers attributed to the seventh son and at times, to the seventh daughter, born after an uninterrupted series of the same sex, remarking that seventh-born children were credited with a “particular supernatural power” (Bloch [1924] 1983: 293, 296). Writing in 1924, Bloch observed that “La croyance sous cette forme a été et est sans doute encore très largement répandue dans l’Europe occidentale et centrale: on l’a signalée en Allemagne, en Biscaye, en Catalogne, dans presque toute la France, dans les Pays-Bas, en Angleterre, en Escosse, en Irlande […]”  (Bloch [1924] 1983: 294-295).

Specifically, Bloch noted that from at least the 16th century onwards, children born into a seventh position in their family supposedly had the power to heal by touch. Such extraordinary people, often deemed sorcerers, even devils, were also referred to by a variety of expressions such as mahr (German) or murawa (Polish) and consequently they had the ambivalent privilege of tapping into powers that were inaccessible to normal humans. Specifically, they were viewed as having healing and divinatory powers, which could entail shape-shifting (Vaz da Silva 2003). That is, those individuals were endowed with the ability to take the form of an animal. From the point of view of modern Western thought this belief causes the dividing line between humans and animals to become blurred. Nonetheless, that blurring or fusion of two natures would be in accordance with the cosmology of native peoples in other parts of the world, especially contemporary hunter-gatherers, where such animistic beliefs also prevail (Bird-David 1999; Brightman 2002; Ingold 2000; Willerslev 2007).

It is quite clear that the qualities assigned to the seventh-son or daughter harken back to an earlier animistic mindset, notions of nonhuman personhood and social practices that in turn connect back to shamanic modes of healing. At the same time, as noted in the earlier chapters of this study, the fused nature of the Bear Son, the half-human, half-bear being known as Hamalau “Fourteen” in Basque, reflects a similar blurring of the Western human-animal divide and related cultural conceptualizations.

And as Bertolotti has demonstrated in his detailed and extraordinarily well researched study Carnevale di Massa 1950 (1992), European versions of the Bear Son folktales, e.g., Giovanni l’Orso, may well reproduce much earlier beliefs, more in consonance with the cosmovision of hunter-gatherers who inhabited these zones in times past. More concretely, the fact that the figure of Hamalau is grounded in the belief that humans descended from bears allows us to consider the significance and symbolism of this character’s own genesis: he is born of a human female, but his father is a bear. In this sense, he is a double-natured intermediary occupying the ontological ground between humans and bears.

Skypedelia: Psychedelic luminaries by Skype. Chaired symposium. Breaking Convention: Multidisciplinary Conference of Psychedelic Consciousness, University of Greenwich, London, 12th-14th July, 2013.

Videos:
https://vimeo.com/74714107
https://vimeo.com/74804463
https://vimeo.com/75282865

Chaired by Dr David Luke

18:00 Casey Hardison & Charlotte Walsh - Charlotte Walsh Interviews Casey Hardison
18:30 Dr Dennis McKenna - Ayahuasca Research Then and Now (1984-2013)
19:00 Dr Tim Scully - A Sketch of the Early History of LSD Manufacturing

The further reaches of psychedelic research. Chaired symposium. Breaking Convention: Multidisciplinary Conference of Psychedelic Consciousness, University of Greenwich, London, 12th-14th July, 2013.

Videos:
https://vimeo.com/80543440
https://vimeo.com/76453525
https://vimeo.com/75468518
https://vimeo.com/76407737

14:30 Torsten Passie Psychedelics in the Care of Patients with Life-Threatening Illness: Concepts, Studies, Results and Methods
15:00 Amanda Feilding The Beckley Foundatio
15:30 Jeremy Narby Ayahuasca Rollercoaster
16:00 Panel Session Questions & Answers
17:00 Graham Hancock The War on Consciousness

What do Psychedelics Mean?: Chaired symposium, Breaking Convention: Breaking Convention: Multidisciplinary Meeting of Psychedelic Consciousness, University of Kent, Canterbury, 1st-3rd April, 2011

Video of the talks here:
https://vimeo.com/71974505 - Paul Devereux
https://vimeo.com/72630695 - Mike Jay
https://vimeo.com/73130036 - Andy Letcher
https://vimeo.com/78782131 - Dr Luis Eduardo Luna
https://vimeo.com/79086535 - Charlotte Walsh
https://vimeo.com/79155202 - Amanda Feilding

Chair: David Luke
09:00 - 09:20 Introduction to Breaking Convention - Conference Committee
09:20 - 09:30 Introduction to ‘What Do Psychedelics Mean?’ - David Luke
09:30 - 10:00 Psychedelia and Sacred Places - Paul Devereux
10:00 - 10:30 Early Western Encounters with Psychedelics - Mike Jay
10:30 - 11:00 Notes Towards a Minimal Theory of Psychedelic Action - Andy Letcher
11:30 - 12:00 Ayahuasca / Yajé in the Contemporary World. Comparative Ethnographical Perspectives - Luis Eduardo Luna
12:00 - 12:30 Psychedelic Drugs and Human Rights: Sacramental Freedoms and Cognitive Liberty - Charlotte Walsh
12:30 - 13:00 A New Convention - Amanda Feilding
13:00 - 13:30 Discussion and Q&A - Panel

This chapter examines how a heterogeneous post-1960s haven for cultural
exiles evolved into a globalized traveler dance music phenomenon. In the
late 1960s and into the 1970s, Goa, the former Portuguese colony of India,
was a destination for traveler ‘freaks’ making departure from the worlds of
their upbringing. In Goa, these travelers procreated a live dance music scene
that developed in the 1980s as a seasonal paradise for ‘trance dance’ parties
led by pioneer DJs, who mixed diverse electronic music for travelers from
locations around the world. These parties were the product of flows of travelers
carrying the latest sounds out of scenes from Paris to London, Rimini
to Ibiza, Berlin to Amsterdam; from a psychedelic tribalism nurtured in
the seasonal DJ-led scene that escalated by the turn of the 1990s, reaching
a peak by the mid-1990s, around which time several factors conspired in
its demise. Among these was the emergence of Goa Trance,1 a psychedelic
trance music that intended to capture the ‘essence’ of the idyllic parties in
Goa through a psychedelic orientalism, a marketed theme compelling the
growth of trance tourism. While the genuine Goa scene declined as a result,
Goatrance, and subsequently psytrance, fl ourished around the world as
evidenced by its paramount expressions, psychedelic festivals. Once traveler
festivals, and thus homes for Goatrance travelers, these events grew to
become recreational destinations for the psychedelic traveler, who is now
less likely to have visited Goa, nor perhaps traveled far from home. Today,
in regional party and festival organizations, the romance of the traveler
sensibility infuses a global event-culture.

What happens when a worldly Israeli cognitive psychologist goes to the Amazon Basin where he ingests the famed psychotropic concoction Ayahuasca (the ‘vine of the dead’) again and again and again? Our intrepid philosophical psychologist is no longer a sprightly youth, maddened for adventure. He is instead an accomplished theoretician with widely published articles (several in this journal) and a noted book (Shanon, 1993) that speak the from the perspective of cognitive (or phenomenological, for Shanon) psychology against the reductive tendency to view the mind’s activities as created by the the brain’s activities. Even before his Amazonian quest, he placed himself in the Gibsonian camp seeing the mind as dynamic intermediary between organism and environment and active participant in both. What did happen is this extraordinary book, a scientific analysis of his own visions and the education of both Shanon’s views and, perhaps, his soul.

The purpose of this paper is to explore New Religious Movements (NRMs) emergent in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that use entheogens or psychedelic substances as sacrament.  This means that the use of mind-altering substances performs an important part in theological views and ritual performances for these groups.  While a wide spectrum of theologies exists among these groups, I will argue that the best way of conceptualizing them as NRMs is through transnational impulses, inspired by global economic trade.  This does not mean that features of these groups do not derive from various ancient traditions; it only means that insofar as we recognize them as new, colonizing and emergent globalizing factors allow us to see the motivation to form these communities in response to diasporic and economic conditions.  It does mean I will have to at times in a point-blank way confront existing generalizations about some groups.  This economic analysis requires a combination of theories to provide more than just a materialist critique.  I will further argue that the historical contexts in which such religions arise is often masked by primitivist and perennial rhetorics that ultimately derive from European categories of ‘Religion,’ causing ethical and scholarly problems in studying NRMs.  I begin by discussing psychedelic religions more generally and then develop a more focused critique of ayahuasca religions, ending with some remarks about the transnational spread of them.

El texto considera una exposición en torno a la cibercultura y su posible relación con el ámbito de lo sacro a través de la figura del cyborg. La ponencia expondrá algunos nodos claves para comprender cómo se vivencian religiosidades y articulan mitologías contemporáneas en el ámbito de lo digital que guardan fuertes relaciones con metáforas arcaicas. Particularmente nos referiremos al cyborg, híbrido entre máquina y hombre como producción simbólica actual de un sujeto que intenta extender las fronteras de su corporalidad matérica y orgánica en pos de una ampliación de sí mismo más- allá de lo terrenal. Con esto, se pondrá en relieve un estatus del cuerpo y por ende de lo humano, que devela un deseo ancestral de trascender los límites de lo físico, al igual que chamanes y rituales de las culturas mítico-mágicas que buscaban un salir del cuerpo para vincularse con animales, espíritus, etc. Así, lo post- orgánico y lo virtual, conceptos asociados a simbología de índole futurista, develan un anclaje transhistórico y transcultural que potencia su importancia como criterios de análisis para las representaciones del cuerpo en el mundo contemporáneo.

A number of authors in recent years have claimed that Early and Medieval Christian art evidence numerous examples of thinly disguised psychedelic mushrooms. This article examines these claims in reference to a single image in a 13th century bestiary in Oxford's Bodleian Library (MS. Bodl. 602, fol. 27v), which is mistakenly identified by these authors as an alchemical manuscript. We conclude that the authors made many mistakes and failed to make their case and fault them on the grounds that none of them made any attempt to check whether their impressions of the picture was accurate. None consulted the original manuscript to see whether the text accompanying the picture confirmed or their impressions are called them into question. None trouble themselves to discover the manuscript's actual date or name. None tried to verify whether the manuscript containing the image actually represented an al-chemical manuscript, and if it did, which specific alchemical work it represented.

The use of psychedelic substances retains a curious and intriguing allure for human beings. Indeed evidence is mounting to suggest that this is a relationship stretching back over 40,000 years to the onset of cave paintings and the emergence of human attempts at symbolic representation (Faroese, 2013, p11). Whist the effects of psychedelic substances for the individual consciousness still remain nothing short of profound, the very existence and persistence of such phenomena opens up some still largely unanswered questions, not only for us as individuals but as a society as a whole. What are we doing when we take psychedelics? Where are we going? What are we hoping to achieve? And of course, why?