# Introduction: Crossroads of Psychedelic Studies ## Introduction: Crossroads of Psychedelic Studies Jeffrey Breau, *Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard University* Paul Gillis-Smith, *Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard University* [ Download PDF arrow\_circle\_right ](https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/2025-02/Breau%20and%20Gillis-Smith%2C%20Introduction.pdf) ![Backlit spiral of rainbow stained glass](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_21_9__1920x825/public/2025-01/iStock-663794682.jpg?itok=xx7_aQW3) ## Introduction: Crossroads of Psychedelic Studies Since the 1960s, Harvard Divinity School has been an influential hub of research on psychedelics and religion. Yet, in many ways, the work of building a rich scholarly community around this area of study is just beginning. The *Psychedelic Intersections: 2024 Conference Anthology* is one step in that larger project. This volume is drawn from Harvard’s “Psychedelic Intersections: Cross-cultural Manifestations of the Sacred” conference, and the essays here feature original interdisciplinary research from scholars and practitioners working at the crossroads of psychedelics, religion, medicine, race, Indigeneity, law, and the underground, history, anthropology, and beyond. We see these intersections as sites for collaboration and innovation in two ways: psychedelics as intersections where unlikely peoples, entities, and institutions meet, and as intersectional forces where the study of psychedelics highlights, challenges, or qualifies pre-existing conceptions, be they imbalances of power, uses of law, or notions of religion and spirituality. In light of these intersections, the *Anthology* invites readers to imagine new futures for the field of psychedelic studies with a vision of scholarship that is multidisciplinary, collaborative, optimistic yet self-critical, involved both within and beyond the academy, attuned to complexity and diversity, and both sympathetic and intelligent. The 2024 “Psychedelic Intersections: Cross-cultural Manifestations of the Sacred” conference was the second annual psychedelics conference at Harvard Divinity School (HDS). It was hosted by the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR), a research center affiliated with HDS. The CSWR has been leading Harvard’s inquiry into psychedelics and religion since the launch of the “Psychedelics and the Future of Religion” series in 2021. As part of the broader Harvard Study of Psychedelics in Society and Culture, the CSWR coordinates speaker series, practitioner workshops, and interdisciplinary research as part of its Psychedelics and Spirituality program. This work is part of the CSWR’s “Transcendence and Transformation” initiative, an ongoing affirmation and investigation of the sacred and the variety of modes that humans have used to access, explore, and be transformed by it. The “Psychedelic Intersections” conference represents an important piece of Harvard’s and the CSWR’s current efforts in psychedelic studies. The annual event was founded and organized by Jeffrey Breau and Paul Gillis-Smith, Program Leads of the CSWR’s Psychedelics and Spirituality program and editors of this volume. The first psychedelics conference was held on April 1, 2023. Having not yet adopted the “Psychedelic Intersections” name, the “Explorations in Interdisciplinary Psychedelic Research” conference focused on the current state of psychedelic research at Harvard. Presentations from 19 students and faculty representing 13 distinct departments and keynotes from alumni Rick Doblin and William Leonard Pickard illustrated the diversity of psychedelic research happening in and around the University. The inaugural “Psychedelic Intersections” conference was held on February 17, 2024. The event included research papers from 27 scholars and practitioners comprising six panels, each representing one of five “intersections” with psychedelics and spirituality: Ancient Traditions, Indigenous Traditions, Medicine, Race, and the Underground. Carl Hart and Luis Eduardo Luna delivered the two keynote addresses. Luna’s morning keynote was both retrospective and forward-looking. He explored the history of psychedelics and plant medicines in the Amazon, recounted his personal and research history with these substances, reported on recent archeological findings that rewrite the history of the Americas, and advocated for care of the human and more-than-human world. Closing the event, Hart’s keynote drew on his decades of research into drugs and addiction to address “psychedelic exceptionalism” and the disproportionate harm that U.S. policies have had on Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities. Both keynotes passionately and persuasively urged those working in psychedelic studies to interrogate their biases, expand their perspectives, and ground their work in an ethic of justice and reciprocity. ### Method at an Intersection: Interdisciplinary, Intersectional, Interpersonal The CSWR was established in 1958 as a research center to support “sympathetic understanding of religions and stimulate an intelligent consideration of the religious issues raised by \[its\] studies.”[1](#references) The statement’s two adjectives, intelligent and sympathetic, encapsulate the Center’s current approach to psychedelic studies*.* Our approach is shaped, on the one hand, by a commitment to rigorous contributions to the intelligent study of psychedelics and religion. On the other hand, the research here is sympathetic; it foregrounds curiosity, thoughtful questioning, and addresses diverse perspectives on their own terms. Even when contributors in this volume are critical, they argue from a place of sympathetic understanding that challenges stereotypes, scholarly boundaries, and outdated assumptions. The “Psychedelic Intersections” title evokes three principles guiding these efforts: interdisciplinary conversation, attention to intersectionality and marginalization, and interpersonal collaboration. Historically, psychedelic research at HDS has been typified by its willingness to cross and challenge disciplinary boundaries, and “Psychedelic Intersections” continues this tradition. This research tradition was established at HDS in 1962 when a doctoral student named Walter Pahnke conducted the landmark “Good Friday Experiment.” His study suggested that when taken in a religious setting, psilocybin could provoke profound mystical experiences, and it cemented the connection between psychedelics and religion in both the popular and academic imagination. Eight years later, the Controlled Substances Act criminalized psychedelics and prohibited research with them. Despite these prohibitions, scholarship on psychedelics continued at HDS. In *Turning East: The Promise and Peril of the New Orientalism* (1977), theologian and HDS Professor Harvey Cox situated psychedelics in a broader trend of Americans’ “turn to the Orient” in their search for a postmodern spiritual practice.[2](#references) Years later, Aline Lucas and fellow HDS students formed Harvard Agape, an informal student group that held religious ceremonies with MDMA as a sacrament based on the scholar of mysticism Evelyn Underhill’s typology of a liturgical event.[3](#references) Lucas presented findings from Harvard Agape at a 1995 conference entitled “Psychoactive Sacraments” organized by the Council on Spiritual Practices (CSP), the proceedings of which were published in the 2001 volume *Psychoactive Sacramentals*. Following that conference, the CSP collaborated with researchers from Johns Hopkins University to develop the first clinical study with psilocybin since the Controlled Substances Act and the advent of the War on Drugs. This study was modeled on Pahnke’s doctoral research, assessing whether psilocybin could occasion mystical experiences as defined by Pahnke’s mysticism questionnaire. Like Pahnke, the Hopkins study showed that psychedelics could, in fact, produce these mystical-type states in participants.[4](#references) That study, widely credited as commencing the so-called Psychedelic Renaissance,[5](#references) reinvigorated research into psychedelics and religion that had been advanced at Harvard four decades prior. This research history is marked by its interdisciplinarity: Pahnke’s training as a medical doctor informed the design of the “Good Friday Experiment”; Cox’s insight into the connection between psychedelics and religion was equal parts history, theology, and autoethnography; and the Harvard Agape group combined the study of mysticism with interfaith religious practice to explore the sacramental potentials of MDMA. Interdisciplinarity is central to the “intersections” that the title of the conference invokes, for the study of psychedelics is inherently interdisciplinary. Clinical studies of psilocybin often deploy “mystical experience” as a measure correlated with positive treatment outcomes. Researching psychedelic churches requires understanding the legal and regulatory frameworks that shape them. Ethical inquiry into the use of many psychedelic plants mandates a historical, decolonial, and Indigenous studies perspective. Scholarship in this field demands that researchers show flexibility across different methodological and theoretical approaches, develop bonds with academics and practitioners across a range of fields, and regularly come into contact with ways of being and knowing outside of one’s disciplinary home. The “Psychedelic Intersections” title suggests not only interdisciplinary engagement but also attention to how intersectionality and marginalization impact psychedelic studies. Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of “intersectionality” urges researchers to assess and address the ways that different identity markers are inseparably entangled and compounded: for example, the effects of racial discrimination are always intersectionally related with the effects of gender discrimination.[6](#references) Her work and subsequent analyses of intersectionality render the complex interaction between identity, power, and privilege visible and reveal how oversimplified analyses render intersecting discriminations and injustices invisible. While the rich methodological tradition of intersectionality cannot be captured in this short volume, the essays feature multiple ways that psychedelics intersect with identity to distort, amplify, and reconfigure power and privilege. Essays on the underground, for example, discuss how the government places an asymmetrical burden on religions that use psychedelics, violating its commitment to religious freedom in the process. Contributions on Indigenous traditions explore how these communities are doubly burdened by both erasure and exoticization in encounters with the West. The unique challenges and contributions of BIPOC therapists are addressed in an essay on the intersection of psychedelic spirituality and race. *Psychedelic* can also be used as an identity marker to gesture to privilege, as Carl Hart highlighted in his keynote and his book *Drug Use for Grown-Ups* (2021). The *psychedelic* moniker is used to set certain drugs apart as special, non-toxic, and even beneficial and virtuous. “Psychedelic Intersections” foregrounds these many intersectional qualities as a means of better understanding and addressing inequities present in psychedelic study and practice. Addressing these inequities involves many challenges. For example, psychedelic researchers have yet to account for reparations to Indigenous communities whose knowledge of these plant medicines was stolen.7 The field needs widely adopted ethical standards that properly account for the unique states psychedelics engender.[8](#references) Scholars, activists, and users must work together to reduce physical and legal risks without demonizing recreational drug use.[9](#references) And the harms wrought by the War on Drugs, most of which fall disproportionately on poor and marginalized communities, need to be undone.[10](#references) The essays presented here approach these and related challenges in hopes of realizing a psychedelic studies field that is rooted in critical awareness, diverse voices, and active collaboration. Finally, the “Psychedelic Intersections” title reflects a collective vision that animates the conference. The conference and these essays set forth new perspectives, challenge assumptions, and generate fresh questions, especially as researchers engage colleagues outside their typical spheres. As a free, public conference, “Psychedelic Intersections” attracts a diverse group of attendees, from devotees of a cannabis church to international scholars to a curious physicist from the next building over. Like the conference, this volume’s essays are intended to be relevant to a broad audience: they do not assume special knowledge, they eschew jargon, and they keep the human consequences of this scholarship in view. The task of developing an interdisciplinary, intersecting, and intersectional psychedelic studies will not be realized by one volume, conference, or University. The *Anthology* is but a step toward this larger project. We are grateful to have found so many intelligent and sympathetic scholars interested in creating such a future. ### Tour of Contributions The “Psychedelic Intersections: Cross-cultural Manifestations of the Sacred” conference was divided into five research tracks organized around five intersections: 1) Psychedelic Spirituality and Ancient Traditions, 2) Psychedelic Spirituality and Indigenous Traditions, 3) Psychedelic Spirituality and Medicine, 4) Psychedelic Spirituality and Race, and 5) Psychedelic Spirituality and the Underground. These intersections were selected to both complicate well-known subjects in psychedelic studies and highlight lesser-known areas in the field. Topics that typically receive significant focus, such as medicine and ancient traditions, are presented here as opportunities to advance research, presenting alternate paths of inquiry. Other topics have been marginalized or poorly understood, such as Indigenous and underground practices, and this collection highlights understudied customs, novel admixtures of traditions, and experimental approaches to psychedelics. Following the conference structure, this volume is divided into thematic sections that represent the panel composition and their corresponding intersections with psychedelic spirituality. Drawing from his keynote, an interview essay with Luis Eduardo Luna grounds this volume in an exploration of his research on ayahuasca since the 1970s, his study of Indigenous cosmology and healing in South America, and his own spiritual development alongside these sacred plants. Below is a brief cartographic tour of the paths that comprise this issue of “Psychedelic Intersections”*—*a map of the crossroads herein. ### Ancient Traditions These essays attempt to incorporate psychedelics into the histories of Judaism, Christianity, and Vedic traditions. Their contributions develop and critique foundational research from the twentieth century into the study of psychedelics and religion.[11](#references) “From Messiah to Mushroom: A Brief History of John Marco Allegro’s *The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross,*” by Geoffrey Smith, tracks the research and correspondence of the Dead Sea Scrolls scholar, John Marco Allegro, that led to his provocative conclusion that the New Testament gospel accounts are encoded texts disguising the truth that Jesus Christ and his apostles were not historical persons, but in fact psychoactive mushrooms. Smith concludes that Allegro’s mushroom hypothesis was informed by many trends in twentieth-century mycological study, alongside a desire to discredit Christianity from its inception. Anna Sierka’s essay, “God’s Pharmacy: On the Use of Entheogens in Jewish Mystical Traditions,” analyzes medieval Kabbalistic texts that illuminate the role of a potentially psychedelic plant—the “marking nut”— in Jewish mysticism. Using the marking nut as a primary example, Sierka argues that these texts can be divided into an exoteric tradition and an esoteric tradition. Texts in the exoteric tradition share the identity of the marking nut and related sacred plants in order to highlight their capacities for healing. Conversely, texts in the esoteric tradition hide the identity and role of these plant assistants to direct the reader away from any specific plant and toward the sacred knowledge obtained vis-à-vis these plants. Finally, Finnian Moore Gerety’s essay, “The Soma Question: Interrogating the History of Psychedelics with Sanskrit Mantras,” traces the enduring interest in the authentic botanical identity of soma in the Vedic texts of the Hindu tradition. Moore Gerety argues that speculation on soma’s identity tracks with the drug fashions of the era in which thinkers speculated about soma’s botanical identity. He proposes a shift in focus away from certainty about soma’s botanical identity and towards the ritual and scripture pertaining to soma. Such a focus on ritual and scripture would afford generative comparative study with similar chants and rituals. ### Indigenous Traditions Three essays on Indigenous Traditions examine diverse encounters with sacred plant knowledge throughout the Americas. Through a textual, iconographic, and archaeological study of the Aztec deity called Xochipilli, Osiris González Romero’s essay, “Xochipilli: Psychedelic Plants, Song, and Ritual in Aztec Religion,” offers new insights into the ritual practices associated with an often-misunderstood deity. Xochipilli is an Aztec god, and altered states occasioned by his psychoactive plants are understood as “flowery dreams.” His plants and their flowery dreams are simultaneously regarded as curing physical ailments, fostering gameplay, and intensifying days of festival. González Romero argues that this Aztec ritual history gestures to the import of psychedelic plants that extends far beyond their therapeutic value or religious use. Alex Gearin’s essay, “Psychedelic Atmospherics,” provides an ethnographic account of “atmospherics,” the affective and perceptual elements of a setting, in Indigenous-led ayahuasca ceremonies in Peru and “neoshamanic” ceremonies in Australia. Gearin argues that “atmospherics” accounts for a far more active role of the environment in which one takes a psychedelic than what has become known simply as “setting,” as in “set and setting.” In “Intersections with Indigeneity in Psychedelic Buddhism,” Colin Simonds reckons with American psychedelic Buddhisms, a term which should always be considered plural, and their relationships to Indigenous American traditions. He suggests paths forward for ethical relationships between Indigenous knowledge holders and Buddhist practitioners interested in psychedelics, including reciprocal engagement with Indigenous plant medicine traditions and respect of Indigenous logics of authority in dialogue with Buddhist logics of authority. ### Medicine Essays at the intersection of psychedelics, spirituality, and medicine propose new possibilities for how religion and healing might coexist. Sharday Mosurinjohn’s essay, “Toward a Psychedelic Theodicy,” interrogates and critiques a biomedical approach to “bad trips.” From this critique, Mosurinjohn proposes a theodicy grounded in animist philosophy as an alternative approach to difficult psychedelic experiences and, specifically, difficult entity encounters. In “Psychedelic Projections: Hidden Narratives Shaping Psychedelic Medicine,” Franklin King draws from his experience as a Mass General Hospital psychiatrist to explore the hidden narratives often underlying conversations about psychedelics. Revealing these narratives, King argues, is necessary to understand disagreements about psychedelic treatment and the ways that psychedelics become metonyms for larger philosophical and ideological agendas. This, in turn, will allow psychedelic researchers and advocates to free themselves from the flawed assumption that psychedelics alone will change the world. Victoria Litman argues in “Facilitating the Sacred: The Role of Chaplains in Psychedelic Law and Policy” that the current regulatory model’s exclusion of chaplains as psychedelic facilitators undermines the efficacy of psychedelic care. Her essay details the role that chaplains can and should play in psychedelic treatments and makes a forceful case for updating the policy surrounding both clinical and non-clinical psychedelic use to allow for trained chaplains to serve as facilitators. The meeting of medicine, healing, and altered states of mind and body is often navigated by facilitators overseeing psychedelic experiences. Moana Meadow’s essay, “Relationality in Psychedelic Facilitation Training Programs,” demonstrates how the Berkeley Psychedelic Facilitation Certificate Program trains psychedelic facilitators through a relational and culturally sensitive approach. ### Race Two essays consider the multifarious ways that culture, ethnicity, and race intersect with psychedelics inside and outside of the clinic. These essays contribute to a vital field of study analyzing how psychedelics intersect with racial differences.[12](#references) Candace Oglesby and Yvan Beaussant’s essay, “The Interconnection of Psychedelic Spirituality, Social Justice, and BIPOC Therapist Engagement in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy,” presents a qualitative study of the experiences of BIPOC therapists who are familiar with or have practiced psychedelic-assisted therapy. They enumerate the barriers BIPOC therapists face to their involvement in psychedelic-assisted therapy, and they gesture to the central role that social justice must play in therapy for BIPOC therapists, psychedelic or otherwise. In “Spiritual Promiscuity, Psychedelic Interdependence, and The First World Congress of Sorcery,” Julián Sánchez González examines the proximity of cultural production to cultural appropriation at the 1975 “First World Congress of Sorcery” (Primero Congreso Mundial de Brujería) in Bogotá, Colombia. Sánchez González analyzes the intermixing of politics, race, and cosmologies that took place there in terms of “spiritual promiscuity,” highlighting such cultural convergences as simultaneously deviant, generative, and sacred. ### The Underground Six essays address the thorny question of a psychedelic underground. The typical notion of the psychedelic underground as a site of illegal practice happening beyond the purview of the state is challenged in Brad Stoddard’s essay, “Manufacturing the Entheogenic Underground.” Stoddard shows how the underground is, in fact, created and maintained by government policy. As a result, psychedelic churches operating illegally must, at the same time, conform their beliefs and practices to the will of the state. Allison Hoots advances a similar argument in “The Legal Definition of Religion in the Context of Modern Religious Exercise with Psychedelics.” As an attorney for psychedelic organizations, Hoots provides a detailed review of the case law that informs the structure and existence of modern psychedelic churches in the U.S. She concludes by arguing that the law fails to account for modern religious practice and aligns too closely with Protestant conceptions of true religiosity. As psychedelics remain federally illegal, religious communities in the US that incorporate such drugs into their practice must try to operate outside the awareness of the government or maneuver through the DEA’s religious exemption process. In “Soul Quest Ayahuasca Church of Mother Earth v. the DEA,” Tarryl Janik draws on his ethnography of Soul Quest, a Florida-based entheogenic church, to document how the organization attempted to navigate myriad legal and regulatory requirements. In complying with the government’s demands, Janik argues that Soul Quest undermined its religious sincerity case, ultimately leading to the church’s dissolution. The intersection of spirituality, psychedelics, and the underground is not limited to formalized spiritual or religious traditions.[13](#references) Drug use is as much recreational as it is spiritual at gatherings like music festivals, raves, and other sites for the carnivalesque. Essays by Jeffrey Breau and Michelle Lhooq address the so-called recreational setting to explore spirituality in this locale. Lhooq’s essay, “A Post-Cringe Theory of Psychedelic Spirituality in the Rave Scene,” draws from her experience as a rave organizer and journalist to deploy the concept of “cringe” as an analytical tool to identify outdated tropes in the dance music scene. In an essay that is equally practical and philosophical, Lhooq argues that cringe is a corrective to the co-optation of ecstasy and transcendence by capitalist interests and shares her attempts to reinvigorate the psychedelic rave space in light of this. Breau’s essay, “With Best Intention,” explores the role that intention-setting rituals play in psychedelic settings, drawing from ethnographic research at the annual Burning Man gathering in Black Rock City, Nevada. He argues that intention-setting is best understood as a “rite of sacralization,” a practice meant to symbolically mark a psychedelic trip as special and sacred. In “Beyond Counterculture: Towards a People’s History of Psychedelic Networks,” Christian Greer articulates a history of psychedelic communities without relying upon the poorly understood label “counterculture.” The counterculture falsely categorizes psychedelic communities as monolithic and united in their opposition to mainstream society. To counter this, Greer argues that the term “psychedelicism” better captures the complexity and cultural centrality of psychedelic-using communities. ### Conclusion The essays in this volume both engage and disrupt the conference’s chosen categories of medicine, underground, Indigenous traditions, race, and ancient traditions. Rather than reifying these groupings as separate and distinct, these scholars highlight the value of intersecting perspectives to generate new questions, challenge assumed wisdom, and open hidden areas of inquiry. From their work, we could propose countless alternative intersections: psychedelics and the law (Hoots, Stoddard, Litman, Janik), recreation (Breau, Lhooq, González Romero, Greer), healing and cursing (Mosurinjohn, Gearin, Beaussant & Oglesby, King), philosophy (Mosurinjohn, King, Lhooq), and “world religions” (Smith, Sierka, Moore-Gerety, Simonds), to name but a few. With each alternative, more possibilities, perspectives, and questions arise. What, for example, differentiates healing and medicine? Is the gulf between recreation and religion as great as it seems? What, if anything, meaningfully separates Indigenous traditions from “world religions,” or from ancient traditions, for that matter? This volume is an invitation to ask and re-ask such questions and to reimagine the psychedelic studies field in the process. Future conferences, scholarship, and intersections will surely illuminate and mystify in equal measure. We look forward to meeting at the crossroads of inquiry. #### Acknowledgments Both the “Psychedelic Intersections 2024” conference and this *Anthology* were a collaborative effort of the highest order. We cannot extend enough gratitude to our contributors, working on a fairly tight timeline of less than a year to release the conference proceedings. Given the timely nature of these intersections and the study of psychedelics more generally, we thank them for moving at the speed of the legal developments, FDA decisions, and general topical relevance of the material in this issue. We are also immensely grateful for the support of the staff at the CSWR for recognizing the impact of this research and for the team who brought this project to fruition. None of the psychedelics and spirituality programming and research would be possible without the leadership of Faculty Director Charles Stang and Executive Director Gosia Sklodowska. Similarly, we are indebted to Bhaswar Khan, Laurie Sedgwick, and Sarah Iannotti for their help with the conference and anthology logistics. Many thanks to Aaron Michael Ullrey for helping to refine the arguments of each of these papers and this introduction, and Deborah Blackwell for her copyediting expertise. Thanks to Chris Lisee and Sadie Trichler for their work on providing these essays online in an open-access format. Thanks as well to Nicolas Low, Aaron M. Ullrey, Nell Shapiro Hawley, and Erik Davis for their editorial review of the introduction. Finally, thanks to the Gracias Family Foundation for their support of this project through their establishment of the Harvard Study of Psychedelics in Society and Culture. ### Author Biographies Jeffrey Breau is Program Lead for the Center’s Psychedelics and Spirituality program and a social science researcher focusing on contemporary psychedelic churches and psychedelic chaplaincy. Jeffrey is currently conducting a multiyear ethnography of novel psychedelic churches in the United States. The study explores these communities’ ritual practices, theologies, social structures, and approaches to safety. Jeffrey also researches psychedelic chaplaincy. In that capacity he is a member of the ketamine chaplaincy advisory group at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital, where he formerly completed an internship providing ketamine integration chaplaincy. Jeffrey is also a Project Affiliated Researcher of PULSE (Psychedelic Use, Law, and Spiritual Experience) at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School. He received his MDiv. from Harvard Divinity School in 2024. ![Headshot of Jeffrey Breau](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_1_1__480x480/public/2024-12/breau_headshot_internet_1.jpg?h=717444a3&itok=aaum07bo) Paul Gillis-Smith is a program lead on psychedelics and spirituality, as part of the Transcendence and Transformation Initiative. He is an HDS alum (M.Div ’24) whose research has focused on the history of psychiatry as it relates to psychedelic medicine and chaplaincy. He has published on the philosophical underpinnings and genealogy of the primary psychometric tool for quantifying mystical experience in psychedelic research, the Mystical Experience Questionnaire (Breau and Gillis-Smith, 2023), and his thesis presented a historical triangulation between psychoanalysis, psychiatric chaplaincy, and critiques of psychiatry as they emerged from R.D. Laing, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari. Grounding his research in hands-on practice, Paul was also the inaugural student chaplain in the Office of Ministry Studies’s ketamine chaplaincy program at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital. Paul co-produced the Harvard Psychedelic Walking Tour, co-facilitated the Center’s first reading group on psychedelics and religion, and he has co-organized the Center’s conference on psychedelics since 2023. ![Paul Gillis-Smith looking into the camera](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_1_1__480x480/public/hds_cswr/files/paulgillis.smith_.headshot_july_23_0.png?h=e176b102&itok=dx-cYtJ1) ## References 1. John Braisted Carman, *Community and Colloquy: The Center for the Study of World Religions: 1958-2003* (Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School, 2006), 18. [\[Return to Section\]](#section2) 2. Harvey Cox, *Turning East: The Promise and Peril of the New Orientalism* (Simon and Schuster, 1977), 32-51. [\[Return to Section\]](#section2) 3. Aline Lucas, “What Is Entheology?” in *Psychoactive Sacramentals: Essays on Entheogens and Religion*, ed. Thomas B. Roberts, vol. 3, 3., The CSP Entheogen Project Series (Council on Spiritual Practices, 2001). See also Aline Lucas, “Entheology,” *Journal of Psychoactive Drugs* 27(3) (1995): 293-295. [\[Return to Section\]](#section2) 4. R. R. Griffiths et al., “Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance,” *Psychopharmacology* 187, no. 3 (August 2006): 268–83,[ https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-006-0457-5](https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-006-0457-5). [\[Return to Section\]](#section2) 5. For more on the Psychedelic Renaissance, see Michael Pollan, *How to Change Your Mind* (Penguin Press, 2018), 21; 29. [\[Return to Section\]](#section2) 6. Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” *University of Chicago Legal Forum* 1989, no. 1 (1989): 139–67; Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” *Stanford Law Review* 43, no. 6 (1991): 1241–99,[ https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039](https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039). [\[Return to Section\]](#section2) 7. See Yuria Celidwen et al., “Ethical Principles of Traditional Indigenous Medicine to Guide Western Psychedelic Research and Practice,” *The Lancet Regional Health – Americas* 18 (February 1, 2023),[ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lana.2022.100410](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lana.2022.100410), for such an approach. [\[Return to Section\]](#section2) 8. For a robust treatment of these issues, see Christine Hauskeller and Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes, eds., *Philosophy and Psychedelics* (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022). [\[Return to Section\]](#section2) 9. Advocacy and research groups, such as the Drug Policy Alliance, are doing much to advance this conversation. [\[Return to Section\]](#section2) 10. Carl Hart addresses this in his “Psychedelic Intersections” keynote () and his text *Drug Use for Grown-ups* (Penguin, 2021). [\[Return to Section\]](#section2) 11. See R. Gordon Wasson, *Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality* (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972); Wasson et al, *The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secrets of the Mysteries* (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978); John Marco Allegro, *The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross* (Hodder and Stoughton, 1970). [\[Return to Section\]](#section4) 12. See Arun Saldanha, *Psychedelic White* (University of Minnesota Press, 2007); Beatriz Labate & Clancy Cavnar, eds., *Psychedelic Justice* (Synergetic Press, 2021); Johannes Thrul and Albert Garcia-Romeu, “Whitewashing psychedelics: racial equity in the emerging field of psychedelic-assisted mental health research and treatment,” *Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy* 28, no. 3 (2021): 211-214; Monnica T. Williams et al, “Psychedelics and Racial Justice,” *International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction* 22 (2024): 880-896; and Grant Jones et al, “Race and ethnicity moderate the associations between lifetime psilocybin use and past year hypertension,” *Frontier in Psychiatry* 15 (2024). Grant Jones also contributed to this panel at the conference in 2024, we were unable to include his work here as it was already under contract elsewhere. [\[Return to Section\]](#section7) 13. See Graham St. John, *Rave Culture and Religion* (Routledge, 2004); Erik Davis, *Nomad Codes* (Yeti, 2010); Rachel Bowditch, *On the Edge of Utopia* (Seagull Books, 2010); and Amanda Lucia, *White Utopias* (University of California Press, 2020) on the religious nature of music festivals and raves. [\[Return to Section\]](#section8) #### Suggested Citation Breau, Jeffrey and Paul Gillis-Smith. “Introduction: Crossroads of Psychedelic Studies.” In *Psychedelic Intersections: 2024 Conference Anthology*, edited by Jeffrey Breau and Paul Gillis-Smith. Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School, 2025. © License: CC BY-NC.