Spiritual Promiscuity, Psychedelic Interdependence, and The First World Congress of Sorcery

In 1975, American writer Annie Dillard won the Pulitzer Prize for her book A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, in which she describes her year-long journey through Virginia, reflecting on transcendence in nature.¹ The book reflects what, decades later, Dillard called her “spiritual promiscuity,” a personal belief system blending Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Sufism.² Deliberately mixing spiritual traditions to construct an otherworldly, private landscape, this stance is built upon a shared transgressive and exploratory theological ethos of the counterculture era during the 1970s. Reacting against the doctrines of monolithic religious systems such as Christianity, spiritually promiscuous individuals asserted their autonomy in building innovative and personal spiritual systems to reinterpret their immediate realities and beyond. The psychedelic movement and psychedelic experiences prevalent during this time allowed a growing sense of interdependence between human beings and non-human entities. These perceptions of continuity and unity spurred a heightened curiosity around non-hegemonic spiritualities, leading to the establishment of interdenominational explorations as a cultural zeitgeist of this period. 

The unorthodox spiritual explorations of the 1970s were prevalent in the United States and also flourished throughout the Americas and the Caribbean. A notable example of Dillard’s spiritually promiscuous approach is the Primer Congreso Mundial de Brujería (First World Congress of Sorcery), held in Bogotá in 1975. This event promoted a deliberately transgressive and politically conscious blending of spiritual practices, where brujería—or witchcraft—served as an umbrella term for diverse spiritual systems and scientific inquiries. These included Afro-Diasporic and Indigenous cosmogonies, parapsychology, aura readings, and more, all of which echoed trends in the psychedelic counterculture of the time. Central to the Congress's vision were the psychedelic explorations of the Colombian avant-garde literary and artistic movement, Nadaísmo (“Nothing-ism”). Nadaísmo embraced psychedelics and mystical experiences during the 1960s and 1970s, leading its most prominent founding member to contribute to the Congress’ slogan: “A la sombra de lo diferente con amor y asombro” (“In the shadow of the unknown with love and wonder”). Both the Congress and this era’s spiritual promiscuity challenged and fragmented traditional religious paradigms, encouraging a transition to a postmodern cultural mindset. 

The First World Congress of Sorcery was international in topics and participants. Devised by Simón González Restrepo with his former spouse Claudia Restrepo and supported by Colombian and German investors, this multi-pronged convention was implemented by a team of 35 staff members and technical advisors recruited from humanist, scientific, and artistic backgrounds, all working for a year in the operation headquarters located in Restrepo’s travel agency in downtown Bogotá. Witchcraft as a unifying topic displayed an intercontinental, permeable platform where non-hegemonic spiritual and scientific explorations came together, highlighting a sense of shared humanity. For instance, academic panelists called attention to the sacred aspect of Vodou as an Afro-Diasporic religion that incorporates Christian theology and to the value of Indigenous cosmogonies and spiritualities in relation to botanic knowledge of sacred plants. They also explored new forms of non-verbal communication in dreams, telepathy, hypnosis, and aura photography. 

The Congress was also polemic and raised eyebrows amongst conservative factions nationally and internationally, who saw the event as sacrilegious, demonic, and a hoax. Pursuing a cultural shock, González Restrepo invited the influential artist Alejandro Obregón Rosés to design the poster for the Congress, which references medieval European depictions of witches’ flight towards orgiastic rites of communion or Sabbath with the devil. By organizing a “Witch Fair,” three art exhibitions, musical and ritual performances, film screenings, and theater displays, González Restrepo also ensured that other various prominent cultural agents would be involved in the far-reaching organization of the event.³ Publicized in national and international media, the Congress brought thousands of participants from Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States to Colombia’s largest convention center at the time. Despite its popularity, the prohibitive fees to attend the academic panels at the Congress limited their access to these broader publics. Its detractors, which included politicians, priests, and journalists, expressed their overt skepticism towards this ambivalent nature of the proceedings. 

Gonzalo Arango’s poetic contribution to the event’s slogan, which linked obscurity and wonder to emphasize unity, grew out of his education in the 1950s with the father of González Restrepo, the mystic writer Fernando González Ochoa. It also reflected Arango’s own psychedelic explorations in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly during his time in the Caribbean archipelago of San Andrés and Providencia. During this period, Arango published the book Providencia with his then-partner, English artist Angela Mary Hickie. This work offered a blend of poetry and illustration, celebrating the richness of simple living and the delicate balance between humanity and nature. Providencia promoted a message of love across species, resonating with the teachings of Ronald Williams—a San Andrés botanist and vernacular philosopher—who also influenced the Nadaístas. Known as “El Brujo Pepa,” Williams preached a philosophy he called the “Gospel of Love.” While he did not necessarily advocate psychedelic use, his views on human interdependence echoed a psychedelic ethos of inter- and intraspecies connectedness. Spiritually promiscuous in nature, Williams’s philosophy drew from Rastafarianism, Latin American leftist politics, and Afro-Diasporic herbalism. The exchange of ideas between Williams, González Restrepo, and Arango inspired the creation of the First World Congress of Sorcery. 

The Nadaístas’ interest in the aesthetics of shock and refusal and their explorations with mind-altering substances that were in vogue during the countercultural movement reveals the Congress’ conceptual basis as a type of avant-garde psychedelic initiative. This purview motivated González Restrepo to publicly describe witchcraft as an expression of “sheer love” and as “the energy of that which is immaterial,” highlighting his pursuit of interconnectedness through spirituality.⁴ In more practical terms, however, the Congress made use of “witchcraft” as an umbrella term encompassing various leading studies and practices related to the otherworldly. This is best seen in the wide-ranging nature of panelists invited to speak at the four-day event, which included Israeli illusionist Uri Geller and the writer Clarice Lispector.⁵ The psychedelic undercurrent of the Congress, therefore, enabled the organizers to make unusual pairings and connections as part of its programming. In doing so, they established an original and unparalleled proposition of non-hegemonic spiritualities as a new model of cultural and political interactions and social contention. 

The wide countercultural network of intellectuals congregating at the congress included more than 20 panelists, two of which were scholars with direct links to Harvard University: Andrew T. Weil and Teresa E. Rohde. An American biologist and doctor, Weil was a researcher at the Harvard Botanical Museum studying alternative medicinal practices from Indigenous communities in the Americas.⁶ A theologian and later a voiceover actress from Mexico City, Rohde had completed a year-long doctoral fellowship at Harvard Divinity School in 1959. In 1975, she had also finished her doctoral program at the Universidad Autónoma de México, where she offered classes on comparative religion and published academic studies on magic, divination, and witchcraft.⁷ Though coming from different disciplines, their scholarly pursuits addressed the central role of psychotropic substances and psychedelics in the spiritual explorations of their time. 

Weil and Rohde’s addresses at the Congress advocated for a pressing need to legitimize the study of non-Western or non-hegemonic knowledge. Weil’s lecture, “Positive Use of Plants,” questioned how to “safeguard the magic of psychoactive substances, whether through rituals surrounding the use of the plant and having an awareness of its powers.”⁸ Rohde’s lecture, “Magic and a World in Crisis,” asserted that “the resurgence of magic, superstition, astrology, witchcraft, bloody cults and divination of all kinds coincide with the worst socio-economic crisis that, in turn, are also of an ethical order.” For the Mexican scholar, the explorations of higher states of being through the intake of psychoactive substances took root in the aftermath of World War II with the onset of the nuclear threat of the Cold War.⁹ Both Weil and Rohde sought a rightful place for human epistemologies dismissed in the past as superstitious; they argued that these epistemologies should be considered necessary catalysts of a generative social-behavioral shift for a sustainable future. For them, mind-altering compounds served as a legitimate way to explore alternative spiritual landscapes and realities alike. 

Despite his contributions, Weil’s research, as well as the Congress’ proceedings at large, should be read with a critical lens. The American scholar’s participation brings to the fore, for instance, questions about the extractive nature of spiritual and scientific explorations with psychedelics during the countercultural era. Weil’s contacts with Indigenous and rural communities in Colombia replicated the colonial histories of European explorers and botanists in the Americas in the non-redistributive nature of their work with local communities. This was best seen in the fact that a number of Colombian scholars became suspicious of this knowledge-driven approach to psychedelic plants by researchers from well-funded institutions abroad, dubbing them a form of “biopiracy” and ensuing a set of restrictions to their operations in the Latin American country.¹⁰ Studying these past initiatives as the backdrop for today’s resurgence in psychedelic research requires, therefore, a racially and socially conscious perspective to counteract these pervasive imbalances. The challenge remains, however, to allow a spiritually promiscuous methodological approach that privileges exploration and exchange without the perils of cultural appropriation and the banalizing of sacred traditions. 

Brazilian minister Nancy Cardoso and theologian Cláudio Carvalhaes have recently discussed the Jurema ontologies and rituals from Bahia in Brazil, arguing that the intermixing of spiritual systems can be paired with social engagement. Jurema is an interracial religion rooted in the oral intake of the eponymous plant, also known as Mimosa hostilis, which holds psychedelic properties similar to lysergic acid diethylamide and ayahuasca. For Cardoso and Carvalhaes, the religion of Jurema contends with a “spiritual promiscuity between Indigenous people and spirits, black people and enchanted ones, as well as their oral nature.”¹¹ They argue that this living tradition, which was thought to be extinct decades ago, enables Afro-Indigenous solidarity against a lack of social recognition and territorial displacement.¹² The spiritual activism of Jurema purposefully counters the effects of settler colonialism against racial minority groups in North Eastern Brazil and has had tangible, positive effects on land ownership and the livelihood of its practicing communities.  

The interspiritual dialogues and minority solidarity present in the Jurema religion share strong similarities with the countercultural psychedelic movement’s pursuit of human interconnectedness. Both Jurema and the First World Congress, for instance, can be seen as part of a cultural continuum aimed to bring together Afro-Diasporic and Indigenous belief systems. For the latter, this intersection is exemplified in the presentation of ritualistic performances of African and Indigenous culture, coordinated by Colombian folklorist and choreographer Delia Zapata Olivella. These included the participation of representatives of María Lionza, an Afro-Indigenous religion from Venezuela, alongside rites derived from Vodou from Port-au-Prince, Candomblé from Salvador de Bahia, and Lumbalú from San Basilio de Palenque. The revival of Jurema and the proceedings of the Congress, moreover, built a platform for minority recognition and interaction with significant symbolic and public effects. A promiscuous approach to spiritual intermixing allowed practitioners and participants to gain increased agency, whether materially or discursively, to reassert and legitimize their realities. 

As a working theory and framework, spiritual promiscuity seeks to respect the sacredness of the spiritual experience while remaining open to the exploration of varied spiritual expressions as shared manifestations of the transcendental. This interaction resonates with literary scholar Sylvia Wynter’s call for thinkers and activists to embrace what is “ecumenically human” and to learn to think “transcosmogonically.”¹³ Finding a middle ground of mutual understanding challenges a rationalistic framework that views humans as merely biologically bound. Instead, following Wynter, it considers equally important dimensions of being human, which are based on linguistic, relational, and practiced experiences of a spiritual or otherworldly nature.¹⁴ 

Across the Americas, interest in psychedelic studies has gained significant momentum over the past decade. In the United States, this trend is best seen, for instance, in the research initiatives at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Much like in the 1970s, explorations with psychotropic compounds are evolving alongside a growing spiritual awareness and curiosity. In popular media, the concept of “spiritual promiscuity” has resurfaced, too, notably through journalist Krista Tippett’s On Being podcast, to describe the multifaceted spiritual lives of her interviewees. While having a direct impact on the greater notoriety of underrepresented communities, such as Indigenous or Afro-Diasporic groups, the blending of spiritual traditions could also bring a lack of reverence for their sacred cosmogonies and rituals. It might also replicate, as was the case 50 years ago, dynamics of extraction and one-sided interpretation, secluding the communities from which these various traditions originate. As these cultural shifts continue to unfold, they present one of the most pressing challenges for academic, artistic, and spiritual circles—many of whose members are observers as well as also active participants in these transformations. 

In this regard, the performance art scholar and queer theorist José Esteban Muñoz’s work serves as both a blueprint and beacon to cultivate the links between promiscuity, spirituality, and the reappearance of the counterculture. For Muñoz, who is known for his influential book Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (NYU Press, 2009), the act of cruising is not merely about glamorized libidinal excess; it is a metaphor for navigating across academic disciplines, material and spiritual realms and regimes of perception.¹⁵ Spiritual promiscuity, therefore, challenges any association with banality, defending, in line with Muñoz’s view of queerness and cruising, a fundamental refusal of pre-established performative forms of being human.¹⁶ To read spiritual promiscuity as a type of cruising is to embrace the idea of promiscuity as a form of care and a necessary transgression for human communion, foregrounding an interest in shared pleasure via exploration, opening channels of communication, and educating oneself in the spiritual landscapes of others. A spiritually promiscuous stance expands Muñoz’s invitation to embrace ecstatic rapture and open-ended consciousness toward difference, advocating for a socially caring and playful approach to the intermixing of the sacred.¹⁷