#  Letter from the Director 

 





August 06, 2026

 

 

 [ Charles M. Stang ](/people/charles-stang) 

Dear friends of the CSWR,

It has been another incredible year here at 42 Francis Avenue. This is my penultimate year as the Center’s Faculty Director, and so I am looking back on eight years and ahead to one more. This past year we have brought to completion and bidding farewell to some important and longstanding programs. Matthew J. Dillon’s digital resource, the “Archives of Mystical Experience,” has just been released—future newsletters will continue to feature its incredible content. The AME will continue to evolve under Matt’s leadership as he sets sail for new shores. Matt is also taking his wonderful and wildly popular podcast, “Pop Apocalypse,” with him—see his interview with Cynthia Bourgeault on G.I. Gurdjieff for a taste of the wise and the weird. We’re grateful for all that Matt has given this research community during his five years as a Research Associate.

Sadly, the Center’s program on Psychedelics, Religion, and Spirituality is also coming to an end. It began five years ago under my supervision and has flourished in the past three under the leadership of Jeffrey Breau and Paul Gillis-Smith, to whom I am enormously grateful. Some of the program’s fine work is featured in these pages, including a research reflection by Erik Davis, a feature on “Sacred Plants and Fungi of the Americas” from our former post-doctoral fellow Osiris Romero González, and three pieces under our “Programming Highlights,” including one by Jeffrey and Paul on psychedelic initiation training.

The Center’s “Research Reflections” series continues to be very popular, and is an especially effective way for our affiliates to translate their scholarship into an accessible format and style. I wish to thank Aaron Ullrey for his expert editorial efforts on this series. We are proud to include six reflections in this issue of *Theosis*, highlighting the range of our affiliates’ interests and expertise, from ancient Atlantis to modern Japan, from American mediums to Silk Road loanwords.

This year and especially next, the Center’s focus is the Transcendentalism Initiative, which explores American Transcendentalism as a local *living* tradition, one that continues to inspire us to innovate on our collective cultural inheritance. Included in this issue are some of the first fruits of the Initiative: Jeffrey Blackwell’s story on our inaugural September workshop; essays by Lawrence Buell, Megan Marshall, and our own Russell C. Powell; or my own on “Thoreau’s Dream Mountain,” which will eventually appear in longer form in Matt Dillon’s edited volume, *The Varieties of Mystical Experience*; my essay is accompanied by artwork from our longstanding artist-in-residence Sarah Schorr, from our shared book project, *Skywater*.

Next year we will welcome nearly two dozen scholars and artists to the Center as residents, all of them working on the Transcendentalist tradition—past, present, and future. I expect the next issue of *Theosis* will include the voices of many of these gifted guests.

Finally, I wish to thank my colleague Gosia Sklodowska, who, in addition to serving as the Center’s Executive Director, is also the Editor-in-Chief of *Theosis*. We have her to thank for this rich and lavishly designed annual publication from the Center!

Sincerely,

Charles Stang