# Program on Psychedelics, Spirituality, and Religion (2021-2026)
Over the past several years, the Center has been privileged to convene an extraordinary community of scholars, researchers, practitioners, artists, students, and staff whose collective efforts have helped establish the CSWR as a leading institutional home for serious and sustained engagement with this rapidly evolving field.
We extend our deep gratitude to all who contributed to this work, and especially to Jeffrey Breau and Paul Gillis-Smith, who first joined this initiative as students and then, over the course of two years (2024–2026), provided dedicated leadership in shaping its final programmatic phase.
We also extend our gratitude to our close collaborators and partners, especially the [Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics](https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/) at Harvard Law School, the [Mahindra Humanities Center](https://mahindrahumanities.harvard.edu/) at Harvard, and the [Office of Ministry Studies at Harvard Divinity School](https://www.hds.harvard.edu/academics/ministry-studies), whose partnership helped deepen and expand this work across Harvard.
The CSWR's long-running engagement with psychedelics and spirituality began with the widely popular "Psychedelics and the Future of Religion" series and expanded to include reading groups, workshops, public scholarship, art exhibitions, digital initiatives, and annual conferences. Most recently, the program matured into a comprehensive, multi-pronged initiative within the broader Harvard Study of Psychedelics in Society and Culture, advancing research on psychedelic chaplaincy, fostering interdisciplinary research communities, and expanding public discourse around psychedelics and religion.
The program had three primary goals: (1) to advance research on psychedelic chaplaincy; (2) to increase public awareness of pressing topics in the study of psychedelics and religion; and (3) to convene a scholarly community around the psychedelic humanities. In service of these goals, the program and affiliates developed a psychedelic chaplaincy training program, supported five multi-year research initiatives, produced over 22 publications, hosted two dozen public events, and organized four, interdisciplinary Psychedelic Intersections conferences.
A review of the program's accomplishments and primary initiatives can be found below.
[### Psychedelic Chaplaincy
](#psychchaplaincy)
[### Psychedelic Intersections Conference
](#conference)
[### Research and Publications
](#publications)
[### People
](#people)
[### Collaborating Centers
](#centers)
[### Reading Groups
](#readinggroups)
[### Psychedelics and the Future of Religion
](#pfr)
[### Art Exhibits and Digital Displays
](#digitaldisplay)
[### Public Programming
](#programming)
## Psychedelic Chaplaincy
**Tending the Spiritual in Psychedelic Care Workshops**
The Tending the Spiritual workshops provided attendees with a broad overview of approaches to spiritually responsive care tailored to psychedelic settings. This program was featured in the [Harvard Gazette](https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/newsplus/center-for-the-study-of-world-religions-brings-psychedelic-chaplaincy-to-forefront/), which provides more information about the pilot workshops and vision of the program.
Our September workshop focused on spiritual care training for psychiatrists, MDs, chaplains, and researchers working in clinical psychedelic settings. The December workshop focused spiritual care training for church leaders, harm reduction specialists, lawyers, and caregivers working in community psychedelic settings. More information about [September is available here](https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/september-workshop) and additional information about [December can be found here](https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/december-workshop).
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### Tending the Spiritual in Psychedelic Care: Community Settings expand\_more
##### Guest Lecturers:
- **Belinda Eriacho:** Wisdom carrier, healer, and founder of Kaalogii LLC; Board member and co-founder of the Church of the Eagle and the Condor
- **Caroline Peacock:** Director of Spiritual Health, Winship Cancer Institute at Emory University
- **Daan Keiman:** Co-founder of the Communitas Collective Foundation; Buddhist and Psychedelic Chaplain
- **Jay Michaelson:** Field Scholar at the Emory Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality; visiting researcher at Harvard Law School
- **Jeffrey Breau:** Program Lead for the CSWR's Psychedelics and Spirituality initiative
- **Roman Palitsky:** Director of Research Projects for Emory Spiritual Health and Assistant Professor for Emory University School of Medicine
##### Topics Covered:
- Spiritual, Existential, Religious, Theological (SERT) overview in psychedelic care
- Highlights from Novel Spiritual Psychedelic Communities
- Legal landscape of religiously based psychedelic practice in the US
- Chaplaincy skills in group settings
- Spiritual care in communal and plant medicine work: trauma-informed and decolonial approaches
- Community ownership and co-design to support spiritually responsive plant medicine work in the community
- SERT elements in retreat settings
- Non-imposition of spiritual frameworks in retreat settings
### Tending the Spiritual in Psychedelic Care: Clinical Settings expand\_more
##### Guest lecturers:
- **Bob (Robert) Jesse:** founder, Council on Spiritual Practices
- **Caroline Peacock:** Director of Spiritual Health, Winship Cancer Institute at Emory University
- **Roman Palitsky:** Director of Research Projects for Emory Spiritual Health and Assistant Professor for Emory University School of Medicine
- **Sarah Crabtree:** Assistant Director of Research, licensed couple/marriage and family therapist, and training seminar leader at the Albert & Jessie Danielsen Institute of Boston University
- **Stephen Lewis:** chaplain at UC San Diego Health
- **Susana Bustos:** clinical psychologist and music therapist trained in Chile; certified Holotropic Breathwork practitioner, and carrier of an Ashaninkan curandera lineage
- **Tara Deonauth:** board certified chaplain, Harvard Divinity School field education supervisor and lecturer in spiritual care
##### Topics Covered:
- Overview of Spiritual, Existential, Religious, and Theological (SERT) domains in Psychedelic Assisted Therapy (PAT), and approaches to engaging SERT domains from chaplaincy and spiritually integrated psychotherapy
- Overview of Spiritual Health Practitioner (SHP) Competencies in PAT
- Spirituality integrated psychotherapy approaches
- Expanded states of consciousness and psychedelic care
- Complementing biomedical perspectives with other models of caring and knowing
- Spiritual Health competencies in action
- Clinical applications for spiritual care (ketamine assisted therapy, clinical trials, palliative care)
### Landscape Analysis: Spiritual Care and Psychedelic Facilitation
In the summer of 2025, the CSWR released “**Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Training in the US: A Landscape Analysis**” preprint, which was published by the journal PLOS One in May 2026.
Commissioned by the CSWR and conducted by leading experts Roman Palitsky, MDiv, PhD (Emory Spiritual Health, Woodruff Health Sciences Center and Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory University School of Medicine) and Caroline Peacock, LCSW, DMin (Emory Spiritual Health and Winship Cancer Center Institute), the report’s findings are based on 13 established and emerging psychedelic facilitation training programs and presents the first detailed systematic analysis of both growing strengths and notable gaps in spiritual, existential, religious, and theological (SERT) care training.
[View the PLOS One article here.](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0350037)
### Workshop Analysis: Tending the Spiritual Workshops
In May 2026, the CSWR released “**Tending the Spiritual Workshops: Development, Evaluation, and Autoethnographic Assessment of Lessons learned,**” a report outlining the structure and pedagogy of the Center's Tending the Spiritual workshops, as well as lessons learned from these efforts.
Commissioned by the CSWR and conducted by leading experts Roman Palitsky, MDiv, PhD (Emory Spiritual Health, Woodruff Health Sciences Center and Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory University School of Medicine) and Caroline Peacock, LCSW, DMin (Emory Spiritual Health and Winship Cancer Center Institute), the report’s findings are based on an auto-ethnographic assessment conducted by the four workshop leads (Roman Palitsky, Caroline Peacock, Jeffrey Breau, and Paul Gillis-Smith).
[View the preprint here. ](https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/gu3zr_v1)
## Psychedelic Intersections Conference
*Psychedelic Intersections* was the CSWR’s flagship conference on the study of psychedelics and spirituality. The conference was founded by Jeffrey Breau and Paul Gillis-Smith in 2023 and grew into an annual conference hosted by the CSWR.
Together, the four events convened over 100 interdisciplinary scholars, practitioners, and policymakers working at the intersection of psychedelics and the humanities. They featured keynote presentations from Rick Doblin, Leonard Pickard, Carl Hart, Luis Eduardo Luna, Marian Goodell, Elías García Méndez, Ramzi Fawaz, Benjamin Breen, and Noah Feldman.
Recordings from each year are available below.
[### 2026: Bridging the Humanities, Religion, & Law
](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2pKZCygFGM&list=PLX_9feVneSp3B1uvtZt_usP3oY7Kcbshq)
[### 2025: Betwixt & Between Chaplaincy, Plant Medicine, & Aesthetics
](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yodSQCTuKmk&list=PLX_9feVneSp0praEn8CJ77B0xGxnb1H7f)
[### 2024: Cross-cultural Manifestations of the Sacred
](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIZ7pGQdIwM&list=PLX_9feVneSp3L82CJ7_8Gj8-5NmyzIipA)
[### 2023: Explorations in Interdisciplinary Psychedelic Research
](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVfasLLaoZQ)
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## Research and Publications
The psychedelics program supported five multi-year research initiatives:
**1) Indigenous Medicine and Psilocybin Mushroom Rituals in Mesoamerica** (Osiris González Romero): This project analyzed Indigenous medicine, especially psilocybin—a classic psychedelic or serotonin agonist that preferentially activates the 5-HT2A receptor subtype—which can enhance symbolic behavior, promote collective rituals, and amplify synchronicity.
**2) Sacred Plant Medicines of the Muysca of Suba** (Paola Andrea Sánchez-Castañeda): This ethnographic project focused on the use of sacred plant medicines by the Muysca community of Suba, an urban Indigenous community in Bogotá, Colombia.
**3) Novel Psychedelic Spiritual Communities** (Jeffrey Breau): This multisite ethnography investigated new religious movements that use psychedelics in the U.S. to examine how novel psychedelic churches form, navigate legal frameworks, address safety, and better understand how psychedelics are reshaping religion and religious freedom in North America.
**4) Saint Children, Psilocybin, and Epistemic Rupture** (Paul Gillis-Smith): This project followed María Sabina’s insistence that psilocybin-containing fungi have lost their force given their use by foreigners by drawing from the records of the Wassons as “patient zero,” implicated in Sabina’s fungal prognosis.
**5) Psychedelic and Ketamine Chaplaincy** (Jeffrey Breau, Paul Gillis-Smith, Tara Deonauth): This clinical research program developed the practice of ketamine integration chaplaincy and investigated new approaches to psychedelic chaplaincy.
### Publications from Psychedelics and Spirituality program affiliates:
#### Refereed articles
Jeffrey Breau & Paul Gillis-Smith, "[Psychometric brahman, psychedelic science: Walter Stace, transnational Vedanta, and the Mystical Experience Questionnaire](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03080188.2023.2266322)," *Interdisciplinary Science Reviews*, 48(5) (2023)
Christine Hauskeller et al., ["Psychedelic therapies: healing for the wrong reasons?"](https://www.nature.com/articles/s44220-024-00344-9) *Nature Mental Health* 2 (2024).
Charles Stang, ["Psychedelic Futures and Altered States in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/harvard-theological-review/article/abs/psychedelic-futures-and-altered-states-in-the-religions-of-the-ancient-mediterranean/CFC771D700D6D7BEA8AD6D961BAC4F27),"*Harvard Theological Review* 117, no. 4 (October 2024).
Jeffrey Breau, Paul Gillis-Smith, & Tara Deonauth, ["Ketamine Integration Chaplaincy: A Novel Spiritual Care Approach to Psychedelic Integration,"](https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/anoc.70012) *Anthropology of Consciousness* 36, no. 2 (2025).
Andrea Sanchez Castañeda, “[There is No Territory to Sow”: Urban Coloniality of Nature and Muysca Dwelling](https://doi.org/10.1111/ciso.70006)," *City & Society* (March 2025).
Roman Palitsky, Caroline Peacock, Jeffrey A. Breau, Paul Gillis-Smith, & Gosia Sklodowska, "[A landscape analysis of psychedelic facilitation training in the US](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0350037)," *PLOS One* (May 2026).
#### Edited volumes and chapters
ed. Jeffrey Breau and Paul Gillis-Smith, [Psychedelic Intersections: 2024 Conference Anthology](https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/publications/psychedelic-intersections/2024).
ed. Osiris Gonzalez Romero et al., [*Mesoamerican Narratives at the British Museum: Ancient Writing, Contemporary Voices*](https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110792287/html?srsltid=AfmBOoqeVoQYsjGq1TZnj-HJwwvKhCep6KeQ_nhaqhuu4cAmtGqw5K0o#contents) (De Gruyter Brill, 2025)
- Macuil Martinez & Gonzalez Romero, ["Renaming and Reinterpreting an Early Colonial Book: The Codex Xiuhpohualli of Tenochititlan"](https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110792287-007/html)
Andrea Sanchez Castañeda, "[Quyca chiahac chixisqua (Sowing ourselves in the territory): embodied experiences of Indigenous urban gardens and the coloniality of nature](https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/decolonizing-bodies-9781350374874/)," in *Decolonizing Bodies* (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Osiris Gonzalez Romero, “[Healing of the Thunderbolt and the Nahua Entheogenic Medicine](https://brill.com/display/title/72151?language=en&srsltid=AfmBOor5knpAMGf-UH9Dr98UoQw_cx_4FIv7RNqRV-dyM-dricJtx3fR)," *Handbook Of Entheogenic Medicine* (Brill, 2025).
ed. Jeffrey Breau and Paul Gillis-Smith, [Psychedelic Intersections: 2025 Conference Anthology](https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/publication/psychedelic-intersections/2025).
#### Public scholarship
Osiris Gonzalez Romero ["Ritual and Religious Uses of Psilocybe Mushrooms in Mesoamerica,"](https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/10/ritual-and-religious-uses-psilocybe-mushrooms-mesoamerica) *CSWR Research Reflections,* October 2024.
Paul Gillis-Smith, ["Lisa Bieberman and the Moral Challenge of LSD: Revising Harvard's History of of Psychedelics,"](https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/01/lisa-bieberman-and-moral-challenge-lsd-revising-harvards-history-psychedelics) *CSWR Research Reflections*, January 2025.
Andrea Sanchez Castañeda, ["Re-appropriation Through Ritual: Muysca Indigenous Resurgence and Performance,"](https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/02/re-appropriation-through-ritual-muysca-indigenous-resurgence-and-performance) *CSWR Research Reflections,* February 2025.
Jeffrey Breau, ["Charting Novel Psychedelic Spiritual Communities,"](https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/03/charting-novel-psychedelic-spiritual-communities-0) *CSWR Research Reflections,* March 2025.
Andrea Sanchez Castañeda, ["Muysca Cosmopolitics,"](https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/06/24/muysca-cosmopolitics) *CSWR Research Reflections*, June 2025.
Erik Davis, "[Superstar: The Psychedelic Jesus of the Counterculture,](https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/10/08/superstar-psychedelic-jesus-counterculture)" *CSWR Research Reflections,* October 2025.
Paul Gillis-Smith, ["LSD Gospel, Christmas Tidings, and the FDA during the Psychedelic Sixties,"](https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2025/11/30/lsd-gospel-christmas-tidings-and-the-fda-during-the-psychedelic-sixties/) *Petrie-Flom Center Bill of Health,* November 2025.
Jeffrey Breau, ["What a Psychedelic Church Reveals about Religion and the Law,"](https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2025/11/28/what-a-psychedelic-church-reveals-about-religion-and-the-law/) *Petrie-Flom Center Bill of Health*, November 2025.
Osiris Gonzalez Romero, ["The Holy Inquisition and the Genesis of Seventeenth-Century Peyote Banning,"](https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/12/03/holy-inquisition-and-genesis-seventeenth-century-peyote-banning) *CSWR Research Reflections,* December 2025.
Jeffrey Breau, ["What Makes Psychedelic Experiences Sacred?"](https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/10/21/what-makes-psychedelic-experiences-sacred) *CSWR Research Reflections*, October 2025.
Stuart Sarbacker, ["Biohacking, Yoga, and Psychedelics,"](https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2026/03/02/biohacking-yoga-and-psychedelics) *CSWR Research Reflections,* March 2026.
Paul Gillis-Smith, ["How Psychedelic Science Invented a History of Religion,"](https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2026/05/26/how-psychedelic-science-invented-history-religion) *CSWR Research Reflections*, May 2026.
#### CSWR Digital Displays
Osiris Gonzalez Romero, [*Sacred Plants and Fungi of the Americas*](https://www.sacredplantsamericas.com/)*,* 2025.
- Access *Sacred Plants and Fungi of the Americas* as [a white paper in English and in Spanish](https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/sacred-plants-and-fungi-americas).
Andrea Sanchez Castañeda, [*Sacred Plants of the Muysca – In the Words and Photos of Community Members,*](https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/08/25/digital-display-sacred-plants-muysca-words-and-photos-community-members) 2025.
## People
The Psychedelics and Spirituality program affiliates included two program leads, postdoctoral fellows, visiting scholars, student research associates, and external collaborators.
[### Jeffrey Breau
](https://jeffreybreau.com/)Jeffrey Breau served as Program Lead for the Center’s Psychedelics and Spirituality program from 2024 to 2026 and was a Student Assistant from 2023 to 2024.
[### Paul Gillis-Smith
](https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-gillis-smith/)Paul Gillis-Smith served as Program Lead for the Psychedelics and Spirituality program from 2024 to 2026 and was a Student Assistant from 2023 to 2024.
[### Paola Andrea Sanchez-Castaneda
](https://hds.academia.edu/AndreaS%C3%A1nchezCasta%C3%B1eda)Paola Andrea Sánchez-Castañeda served as a postdoctoral fellow in Religion and Indigenous Plant Medicine Traditions of the Americas from 2024 to 2025.
[### Osiris González Romero
](https://www.osirisgonzalez.com/en/)Osiris González Romero served as postdoctoral fellow with the Psychedelics and Spirituality program from 2024 to 2025.
[### J. Christian Greer
](https://www.jchristiangreer.com/)J Christian Greer was a postdoctoral fellow in Transcendence and Transformation from 2020 to 2022.
[### Frédérique Apffel-Marglin
](https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/people/frederique-apffel-marglin)Frédérique Apffel-Marglin was a Research Affiliate with the CSWR from 2024 to 2026.
[### Christine Hauskeller
](https://www.hauskeller.de/)Christine Hauskeller was a visiting scholar affiliated with the Psychedelics and Spirituality program for the fall of 2024.
[### Erik Davis
](https://techgnosis.com/)Erik Davis was a visiting scholar affiliated with the Psychedelics and Spirituality program for the fall of 2025.
[### Donna Torres
](https://toseeclearly.com/)Donna Torres was a Visiting Scholar at the CSWR for the fall of 2025.
[### Stuart Ray Sarbacker
](https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/directory/stuart-ray-sarbacker)Stuart Sarbacker was a visiting scholar affiliated with the Psychedelics and Spirituality program for the spring of 2026.
[### Sadie Trichler
](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sadie-trichler/)Sadie Trichler was a Student Assistant with the Psychedelics and Spirituality program from 2024 to 2026.
[### Lila Glenn Rimalovski
](https://www.lilarimalovski.com/about)Lila Glenn Rimalovski was a Student Assistant with the program and co-led the Psychedelics Beyond Psychedelics reading group from 2025 to 2026.
[### Paula Ortiz
](https://www.linkedin.com/in/paula-ortizb)Paula Ortiz was a Student Assistant with the program and co-led the Psychedelics Beyond Psychedelics reading group from 2025 to 2026.
[### Emily Marie Lippold Cheney
](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lippoldcheney/)Emily Marie Lippold Cheney was a Student Assistant with the program and co-led the Psychedelics Beyond Psychedelics reading group from 2025 to 2026.
[### Tristan Angieri
](https://www.tristanangieri.com/)Tristan Angieri was a Student Assistant with the program and led the Psychedelics & Aesthetics reading group from 2024 to 2025.
[### Roman Palitsky
](https://spiritualhealth.emory.edu/about-us/bios/palitsky-roman.html)Roman Palitsky was an external collaborator on the "Tending the Spiritual" psychedelic chaplaincy project from 2025 to 2026.
[### Caroline Peacock
](https://spiritualhealth.emory.edu/about-us/bios/peacock-caroline.html)Caroline Peacock was an external collaborator on the "Tending the Spiritual" psychedelic chaplaincy program from 2025 to 2026.
## Collaborating Centers
The Psychedelics and Spirituality program was fortunate to work with many collaborators at Harvard and beyond.
In particular, we recognize and thank our collaborators in the [Harvard Study of Psychedelics in Society and Culture](https://psychedelics-study.harvard.edu/), which includes the teams at [The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics](https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/) at Harvard Law School and the [Mahindra Humanities Center](https://mahindrahumanities.harvard.edu/). The CSWR also worked closely with colleagues from Harvard Divinity School's [Office of Ministry Studies](https://www.hds.harvard.edu/office/office-ministry-studies), co-sponsored the "[Psychedelics in Monotheistic Traditions: Sacramental Practice and Legal Recognition](https://www.psychedelicsandreligion.info/)" conference with the [Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law](https://pjil.law.harvard.edu/) at Harvard Law School, and collaborated with researchers from the [Emory Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality](https://psychedelics.emory.edu/) on psychedelic chaplaincy initiatives.
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## Reading Groups and Workshops
The CSWR hosted a variety of reading groups and workshops, examining psychedelics and research related to them through decolonial, archival, devotional, and aesthetic prisms, among others. Find the catalogue of these groups and their reading lists below.
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### Psychedelics: Sacred and Subversive (2023-2024) expand\_more
Are psychedelics going to save religion? What ethical and moral questions surround psychedelic use, especially for substances which have roots in ancient or indigenous traditions? Who gets to decide what is real vs. hallucination—and how do psychedelics challenge our answers?
Organized and facilitated by Jeffrey Breau and Paul Gillis-Smith, then 3rd-year Master of Divinity students.
### Fall 2023
#### 1) Introduction to “Psychedelics: Sacred and Subversive”
Christopher Partridge, “Technologies of Transcendence,” in *High Culture: Drugs, Mysticism, and the Pursuit of Transcendence in the Modern World* (Oxford, 2018).
Nese Devenot et. al., [“Dark Side of the Shroom: Erasing Indigenous and Counterculture Wisdoms with Psychedelic Capitalism, and the Open Source Alternative,”](https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/anoc.12154) *Anthropology of Consciousness* 33, no. 2 (2022): 476-505.
Ron Cole-Turner, [“Psychedelic Mystical Experience: A New Agenda for Theology,”](https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/13/5/385) *Religions* 13, no. 5 (2022): 385.
*Optional:*
- Partridge, “Revolution in the Head,” in *High Culture.*
- Mat Keel, [“Neuro-plastic Shamanism? Towards a Political Ontology of Whiteness and the Psychedelic Zeitgeist,”](https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/anoc.12159) *Anthropology of Consciousness* 33, no. 2 (2022): 412-442.
#### 2) Psychedelic Underground: New Religious Movement?
Damon R. Bach, “Vibrations across the Nation: The Expansion of the Counterculture, 1967 to 1970,” in *The American Counterculture: A History of Hippies and Cultural Dissidents* (University Press of Kansas, 2020).
Amanda Lucia, “Introduction,” in *White Utopias: The Religious Exoticism of Transformational Festivals* (University of California Press, 2020).
Arun Saldanha, “Freaking Whiteness, The Molecular Revolution,” in *Psychedelic White: Goa Trance and the Viscosity of Race* (University of Minnesota Press, 2007).
*Optional:*
- Mike Marinacci, “Native American Church: Trouble and Triumph on the Long Peyote Road,” “Psychedelic Venus Church: Sex, Drugs, and the Goddess of Ecstasy,” in *Psychedelic Cults and Outlaw Churches: LSD, Cannabis, and Spiritual Sacraments in Underground America* (Park Street Press, 2023).
- Bach, “Introduction,“ in *The American Counterculture*.
- Graham St. John, *Global Tribe: Technology, Spirituality and Psytrance* (Equinox, 2012).
#### 3) Psychedelics and metaphysics
Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes, [“On the need for metaphysics in psychedelic therapy and research,”](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1128589/full) *Frontiers in Psychiatry* 14 (2023).
Sjöstedt-Hughes, “White Sun of Substance: Spinozism and the Psychedelic *amor dei intellectualis,*” in *Philosophy and Psychedelics: Frameworks for Exceptional Experience* ed. Christine Hauskeller and Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes (Bloomsbury, 2022).
Michael Halewood, “Making Your Soul Visible,” *Philosophy and Psychedelics.*
#### 4) Psychedelic Spirituality as Drug Spirituality
Mike Jay, “Twice Born” and “Epilogue: After Drugs,” in *Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind* (Yale, 2023).
Carl Hart, “Psychedelics: We are One,” in *Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear* (Penguin Random House, 2022).
*Optional:*
- Elizabeth Kelly Gray, “Federal Regulation Begins, 1875-1914,” in *Habit Forming: Drug Addiction in America, 1776-1914* (Oxford, 2022).
- Chris Elcock, “Building Utopia: Nina Graboi, the East Village, and the Psychedelic Counterculture,” in *Psychedelic New York: A History of LSD in the City* (McGill Queen's University Press, 2023).
- [“Talking to PCP Advocate Timothy Wyllie,”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehUKmZjlZOY) *Hamilton's Pharmacopeia* (Vice, 2016).
#### 5) Psychedelics and Healing
Hil Malatino, “After Negativity: On Whiteness and Healing,” in *Side Affects: On Being Trans and Feeling Bad* (University of Minnesota Press, 2022).
Christine Hauskeller, “Individualization and Alienation in Psychedelic Psychotherapy,” in *Philosophy and Psychedelics.*
Nicolas Langlitz et al, [“Moral psychopharmacology needs moral inquiry: the case of psychedelics,”](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.680064/full) *Frontiers in Psychiatry* 12 (2021).
#### 6) Global Histories
[*Expanding Mindscapes: A Global History of Psychedelics*](https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/5697/Expanding-MindscapesA-Global-History-of) ed. Erika Dyck and Chris Elcock (MIT Press, 2023), pick any chapter!
### Spring 2024
For this semester, readings were provided as "choose your own adventure." Discussion was based on the theme of the week and informed by the material selected by participants.
#### 1) Decolonizing psychedelic research and practice
Christine Hauskeller et al, [“Decolonization is a metaphor towards a different ethic. The case from psychedelic studies,”](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03080188.2022.2122788) *Interdisciplinary Science Reviews* 48, no. 5 (2023).
Yuria Celidwen et al, [“Ethical principles of traditional Indigenous medicine to guide western psychedelic research and practice,”](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanam/article/PIIS2667-193X(22)00227-7/fulltext) *The Lancet Regional Health* 18 (2023).
Timothy Vilgiate, [“From Rubber Adulterant to Ceremonial Psychedelic: Voacanga Africana in the transnational imagination, 1894-2018,”](https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/5697/Expanding-MindscapesA-Global-History-of) in *Expanding Mindscapes: A Global History of Psychedelics* ed. Erika Dyck and Chris Elcock (MIT Press, 2024).
Keith Williams et al, [“Indigenous Philosophies and the ‘Psychedelic Renaissance,’”](https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/anoc.12161) *Anthropology of Consciousness* 33, no. 2 (2022): 506-527.
#### 2) God dons a labcoat: measuring mysticism, quantifying the divine, and the "problem" of subjective experience in clinical research
Yvan Beaussant and Kabir Nigam, [“Expanding Perspectives on the Potential for Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies to Improve the Experience of Aging,”](https://www.ajgponline.org/article/S1064-7481(22)00527-9/fulltext) *The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry* 31, no. 1 (2023): 54-57.
William Richards, “Introduction,” in *Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences* (Columbia University Press, 2016).
Rick Strassman, [“The psychedelic religion of mystical consciousness \[book review of *Sacred Knowledge\]*,”](https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/2/1/article-p1.xml) *Journal of Psychedelic Studies* 2, no. 1 (2018).
Jeffrey Breau and Paul Gillis-Smith, [“Psychometric Brahman, Psychedelic Science: Walter Stace, transnational Vedanta, and the Mystical Experience Questionnaire,”](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03080188.2023.2266322) *Interdisciplinary Science Reviews* 48 (2023).
#### 3) Whither integration? What are we integrating, where did this post-experience category come from, and how are we even supposed to do it?
Janis Phelps, [“Developing Guidelines and Competencies for the Training of Psychedelic Therapists,”](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0022167817711304) *Journal of Humanistic Psychology* 57, no. 5 (2017).
Alex Belser et al, [“Patient Experiences of Psilocybin-Assisted Psychotherapy: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis,”](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022167817706884) *Journal of Humanistic Psychology* 57, no. 4 (2017).
Rachel Harris, “What the hell is integration anyway?” in *Swimming in the Sacred: Wisdom from the Psychedelic Underground* (New World Library, 2023).
Oregon Health Authority, [“333-333-3050: Psilocybin Training Program Core Requirements,”](https://secure.sos.state.or.us/oard/displayDivisionRules.action?selectedDivision=7102) along with any mention of *integration* on this page (of which there are 38).
#### 4) What to do about ayahuasca: some questions about the South American brew(s)
Frédérique Apffel-Marglin and Randy Chung-Gonzales, "Part 2," in *Initiated by the Spirits: Healing the Ills of Modernity through Shamanism, Psychedelics and the Power of the Sacred* (Green Fire Press, 2022).
André van der Braak, “Introduction” and “Religiosity as Engaging with Beings of Religion,” in *Ayahuasca as Liquid Divinity: An Ontological Approach* (Lexington Books, 2023).
#### 5) Psychedelics and creativity
Emily Lordi, “[The Radical Experimentation of Black Psychedelia](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/10/t-magazine/black-psychedelia.html),” *The New York Times Style Magazine,* February 10, 2022.
Sam Gandy et al, [“Psychedelics as potential catalysts of scientific creativity and insight,”](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20503245221097649) *Drug Science, Policy and Law* 8 (2022).
Nese Devenot and George Erving, [“Psychedelic literary studies and the poetics of disruption,”](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1155908/full) *Frontiers in Psychology* 14 (2023).
#### 6) Psychedelics and epistemic justice: a debate
Eduardo Schenberg and Konstantin Gerber, [“Overcoming epistemic injustices in the biomedical study of ayahuasca: Towards ethical and sustainable regulation,”](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13634615211062962) *Transcultural Psychiatry* 59, no. 5 (2022).
Beatriz Labate et al, [“On epistemic injustices, biomedical research with Indigenous people, and the legal regulation of ayahuasca in Brazil: The production of new injustices?”](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13634615221120869) *Transcultural Psychiatry* 59, no. 5 (2022).
Eduardo Schenberg and Konstantin Gerber, [“Epistemic losses, cultural exclusions, and the risk of biopiracy in the globalization of ayahuasca: A reply to Labate et al,”](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13634615221131597) *Transcultural Psychiatry* 59, no. 5 (2022).
### A Decolonial Lens on Psychedelic Ethics (Fall 2024) expand\_more
Led by CSWR Visiting Scholar Christine Hauskeller, this series of six workshops explores the intersection of decolonial theory and psychedelic ethics. We will examine power dynamics within the evolving field of psychedelic studies, focusing on conflicts between diverse knowledge systems and practices. Beginning with an overview of decolonial concepts, we'll progress through critical analyses of clinical research, aesthetic representations, and the commodification of psychedelic experiences. The final sessions will focus on those objectified by colonizing practices in the psychedelic space namely plants and animals, indigenous groups, and underground practitioners.
### Adopting a Decolonial Lens: Rethinking Psychedelic Ethics
This opening session will provide a comprehensive overview of decolonial approaches to psychedelic ethics, why it matters and the current state of discussion in psychedelic studies. We will explore key concepts from decolonial theory and their application to psychedelic studies, reading the open-access article "Decolonization is a metaphor towards a different ethic. The case from psychedelic studies" (Hauskeller et al. 2022).
Readings:
1. Celidwen, Y., Redvers, N., Githaiga, C. et al. (2023) [Ethical principles of traditional Indigenous medicine to guide western psychedelic research and practice](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lana.2022.100410), The Lancet Regional Health - Americas, Volume 18
2. Hauskeller C. et al. 2022, [Decolonization is a Metaphor for a Different Ethic.](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1080/03080188.2022.2122788)
### The Power of Knowledge – Decolonizing the Clinical Gaze
The medical sector is a powerful institution in contemporary society. The way in which psychedelics are currently filtered through scientific processes and procedures is creating a specific kind of expertise and knowledge. However, the medicalization of psychedelics can also be read as a contradiction in terms. The session will discuss how the standardization of psychedelic experiences in clinical settings can be seen as a form of colonization, potentially erasing or delegitimizing other ways of knowing. We will analyze the ongoing debates within clinical teams about standards for researching these substances and experiences. Recommended preparatory reading includes the relevant chapter in the book "Philosophy and Psychedelics."
**Reading(s):** Please reflect on how of the clinical article approaches its subject, what its approach highlights, what it takes for granted, and what it renders invisible:
1. van Elk M, Fried E.I. [History repeating: guidelines to address common problems in psychedelic science.](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10521293/) *Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology*. 2023;13.
2. If you want to read some more, I suggest Hauskeller, C. (2022). [Individualization and Alienation in Psychedelic Psychotherapy](http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350231641.ch-007). In C. Hauskeller & P. Sjöstedt-Hughes (Ed.). *Philosophy and Psychedelics: Frameworks for Exceptional Experience* (pp. 107–132). London: Bloomsbury Academic.
### Aesthetics and Experience: Decolonizing Psychedelic Representations
The workshop will examine the commodification of psychedelic art and its potential impact on individual experiences. We explore the sensory and aesthetic dimensions of psychedelic experiences and their ethical implications. We discuss two contrasting perspectives: first, the possible molding or alienation of experiences through research designs and questionnaires; second, the impact of artistic representations of psychedelic experiences on public perceptions and expectations. We will also address the ethical responsibilities in communicating about psychedelic experiences, particularly in therapeutic contexts where unmet expectations can lead to distress. The session will touch on historical perspectives, such as Herbert Marcuse's views on psychedelics' potential for social change and consider how these ideas relate to contemporary psychedelic culture.
**Material and Readings:**
1.
2. Kaelen M, Giribaldi B, Raine J, et al. The hidden therapist: evidence for a central role of music in psychedelic therapy. Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2018 Feb 235(2):505-519. doi:10.1007/s00213-017-4820-5.
Study playlists listening to ( and
And also Luna L.E.,
### Respecting Nature - Relationships with Plants and Animals in Psychedelic Cultures
This workshop examines the ethical implications of bioprospecting and commodification of psychedelic plants and animals. We will explore concepts like Terra Nullius and the "doctrine of discovery" that have historically justified the appropriation of natural and indigenous resources. We will explore how the medicalization and commercialization of psychedelics often exploit nature and discuss the institutional systems that have been designed to secure this power relation, such as patent laws and intellectual property regimes continuing colonial patterns of domination. Yet, there are also new forms of cultivation and economic relations emerging, for instance in peyote farming. We'll consider tensions between indigenous and Western engagements with nature and address "natural" versus "synthetic" substances in psychedelic research.
Readings:
Look up :
1. Kettner H, et al. (2019): From Egoism to Ecoism: Psychedelics Increase Nature Relatedness in a State-Mediated and Context-Dependent Manner. Int J Environ Res Public Health. Vol 16(24):5147.
2. Luis Eduardo Luna (2011) I[ndigenous and mestizo use of ayahuasca. An overview](https://www.iceers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Rafael_Guimares_The-Ethnopharmacology_of_Ayahuasca.pdf)*. The Ethnopharmacology of Ayahuasca*, 2011: 1-21 ISBN: 978-81-7895-526-1
### Respecting Indigenous Knowledges and Practices in the Commodification of Psychedelics
This workshop focuses on the complex intersections between the rich and diverse indigenous uses of psychedelics and Western interests. Past actions from the colonial powers in the Americas prosecuting peyote-using women in the 1500s to the transactions Gordon R Wasson conducted with Maria Sabina, exploitation and oppression seem to shape transcultural encounters. The contemporary psychedelic tourism industry is another problematic case in point. In this session we'll discuss the ethical considerations surrounding the use of traditional knowledge in modern contexts, and the role of another set of dualism, namely "scientific" versus "traditional" and "spiritual". We'll also address the right of refusal and the importance of indigenous control over research involving their practices and knowledge. In recent developments indigenous scholars and practitioners discuss how they can ethically share their expertise and practices and thus remodel the power dynamics between Western and indigenous knowledge holders concerning psychedelics.
### Countercultural Expertise: The Role of Psychedelic Subcultures
Our final workshop delves into the rich history and knowledge base of psychedelic subcultures, examining how these communities have developed their own forms of expertise outside mainstream institutions. We will explore the validity of experiential knowledge in psychedelic contexts, such as that of experienced ravers. We will explore how the current "psychedelic renaissance" relates to earlier waves of Western interest in psychedelics, and how subcultural knowledge is often marginalized in the push for medicalization and professionalization. The session will examine the tension between the individualized, commodified approach to psychedelics in much current research and the more communal, spiritual, or countercultural approaches found in many subcultures. We'll discuss how to acknowledge and respect diverse forms of psychedelic knowledge and practice without falling into problematic dualisms or perpetuating colonial power structures.
### Psychedelics and Aesthetics (2024-2025) expand\_more
This reading group was organized and facilitated by Tristan Angieri, then MTS student at Harvard Divinity School. How does psychedelic experience influence the perception of art and beauty? What role does aesthetics play in the psychedelic experience, and how does it impact ethical considerations? This reading and learning group will explore these questions and more, focusing on the relationship between psychedelics, aesthetics, and ethics.
### Fall 2024
### 1) Representing extraordinary perceptions
Sort**Artistic subject****State alteration focus via Erowid****Theoretical Approach**Music video, [“Zodiac Sh\*t,” ](https://www.lilfuchs.com/Flying-Lotus-zodiac-shit)Flying Lotus, video by lilfuchs (2010).
Music video, [“Remind U,”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrpOugAwHc4) Flying Lotus, video by Winston Hacking (2019).
[Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD)](https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_LSD.shtml)
[4-Bromo-2,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine (2C-B)](https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_2CB.shtml)
Walter Mignolo and Rolando Vazquez, [”Decolonial AestheSis: Colonial Wounds/Decolonial Healings,”](https://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_article/decolonial-aesthesis-colonial-woundsdecolonial-healings/) *Social Text* (2013).
Marine Schütz, [“Decolonial aesthetics,”](https://keywordsechoes.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Keywords-Echoes-Marine-Schu%CC%88tz-Decolonial-Aesthetics-2018.pdf) ECHOES: European Colonial Heritage Modalities in Entangled Cities (2018).
#### 2) Clinical mind games
Sort**Artistic subject****State alteration focus via Erowid****Theoretical Approach**Video game, [“Mind Mirror,”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epOL4QiPLJo&ab_channel=Squakenet) Timothy Leary (1986).
[Ketamine](https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Ketamine.shtml)
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of its Mechanical Reproduction,” (1936).
Susan Buck-Morss, [“Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin's Artwork Essay Reconsidered,”](https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/778700.pdf) *October* 62 (Autumn 1992): 3-41.
#### 3) Passing hash
Sort**Artistic subject****State alteration focus via Erowid****Theoretical Approach**Théophile Gautier, [“Le Club Des Hashischins: Treadmill,”](https://hex.ooo/library/haschischins.html) *Revue des Deux Mondes* (1846).
Fitz Hugh Ludlow, “The Kingdom of the Dream,” in *The Hasheesh Eater* (1857).
[Marijuana/Cannabis](https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Cannabis.shtml)
Walter Benjamin, “From ‘Surrealism’,” “From *The Arcades Project*,” in *On Hashish* ed. Howard Eiland (Belknap, 2006).
#### 4) What makes the mushrooms speak?
Sort**Artistic subject****State alteration focus via Erowid****Theoretical Approach**“The Folkways Chant (Chjon Nka),” in *Maria Sabina: Selections* ed. Jerome Rothenberg (University of California Press, 2003).
María Sabina, [“Chjon Nka,”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsolGtuwvYU&list=OLAK5uy_kk6lSn7SejgbkX5OoY5Dc3x1gzj-uLGXU) *Mushroom Ceremony of the Mazatec Indians of Mexico,* Folkways Records, 1957.
[Psilocybin (magic mushrooms)](https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Mushrooms.shtml)
Henry Munn, “The Uniqueness of Maria Sabina,” *Maria Sabina: Selections.*
Roger K. Green, “Maria Sabina,” in *A Transatlantic Political Theology of Psychedelic Aesthetics* (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).
#### 5) Who needs drugs?
Sort**Artistic subject****State alteration focus via Erowid****Theoretical Approach**Howard Charing et al, “Biography of Pablo Amaringo,” “The Visions: Part 1, Plant-Teachers and Shamanic Powers,” in *The Ayahuasca Visions of Pablo Amaringo* (Inner Traditions, 2011).
[Ayahuasca](https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Ayahuasca.shtml)
Don José Campos, “Introduction” through “Ceremony” (p. XIII-57), “Death” through “A Plant that Unties Knots” (p. 82-109), and “Glossary” (p. 130-138), in *The Shaman & Ayahuasca: Journeys to Sacred Realms* trans. Alberto Roman, ed. Geraldine Overton (Divine Arts, 2011).
Roger K. Green, “The Return to 'Nature' and the Problem of the Perennial,” in *A Transatlantic Political Theology of Psychedelic Aesthetics* (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).
### Spring 2025
#### 1) Soma in the Rig Veda
Sort**Artistic Subject****State Alteration Focus via Erowid****Theoretical Approach**“IX Mandala,” in *The Rigveda: The Earliest Religious Poetry of India,* vol. 3, trans*.* Stephanie Jamison and Joel Brereton (Oxford, 2014): read introduction and 2 or more hymns.
“Soma,” in *The Rig Veda, An Anthology: One Hundred and Eighty Hymns* ed. Wendy Doniger (Penguin, 1981).
[DMT](https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_DMT.shtml)
Thomas Oberlies, “The Cult of the Rigvedic Religion,” in *The Religion of the Rigveda* (Oxford, 2024).
*Optional/exploratory:*
- Frits Staal, [“How a Psychoactive Substance Becomes a Ritual: The Case of Soma,”](https://www.jstor.org/stable/40971910?seq=1) *Social Research* 68, no. 3 (2001): 745–78.
- Matthew Clark, [“Soma and Haoma: Ayahuasca analogues from the Late Bronze Age,”](https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/3/2/article-p104.xml) *Journal of Psychedelic Studies* 3, no. 2 (2019): 104-116.
#### 2) Flowers and Toads in the Archaeological Record
Sort**Artistic Subject****State Alteration Focus via Erowid****Theoretical Approach**Native American Datura art and Olmec toad iconography
[Datura](https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Datura.shtml)
[Toad Venom](https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Toad_Venom.shtml)
Christine S. VanPool et al, [“Datura, the Mimbres Flower World, and Ideational Cognition,”](https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/41984/chapter/406551207) in *Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Archaeology*, ed. Thomas Wynn, Karenleigh A. Overmann, and Frederick L. Coolidge (Oxford, 2024).
Alison Bailey Kennedy, [“Ecce Bufo: The Toad in Nature and in Olmec Iconography,”](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2742313) *Current Anthropology* 23, no. 3 (1982): 273–90.
*Optional/exploratory:*
- Klaus Wellmann, [“North American Indian rock art and hallucinogenic drugs,”](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/359273) *JAMA* 239, no. 15 (1978): 1524-7.
- Elisa Guerra-Doce, [“Psychoactive Substances in Prehistoric Times: Examining the Archaeological Evidence,”](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1751696X.2014.993244) *Time and Mind* 8, no. 1 (2015): 91–112.
- Giorgio Samorini, [“The Oldest Archeological Data Evidencing the Relationship of Homo Sapiens with Psychoactive Plants: A Worldwide Overview,”](https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/3/2/article-p63.xml) *Journal of Psychedelic Studies* 3, no. 2 (2019).
- D.W. Robinson et al, [“Datura quids at Pinwheel Cave, California, provide unambiguous confirmation of the ingestion of hallucinogens at a rock art site,”](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2014529117) *PNAS* 117, no. 49 (2020).
#### 3) Altered States and Aleister Crowley's Occultism
Sort**Artistic Subject****State Alteration Focus via Erowid****Theoretical Approach**Oliver Haddo \[Aleister Crowley\], “The Herb Dangerous Part II: The Psychology of Hashish,” *The Equinox*, 1, no. 2 (1909).
[Cannabis- hash](https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Cannabis_Hash.shtml)
[The preparation of charas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfC-mVNzbG0)
Wouter Hanegraaff, “Occult/Occultism,” in *Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism* ed. Wouter Hanegraaff (Brill, 2006).
Keith Cantú and Lennert Gesterkamp, [”Converging Cosmologies: Esoteric Practices of Buddhism, Hindu Yoga, and Daoism in Aleister Crowley's Thelema,”](https://cas-e.de/2025/06/12/comparing-esoteric-practices-from-a-global-perspective-experiments-in-collaborative-authorship/) in *Comparing Esoteric Practices from a Global Perspective: Experiments in Collaborative Authorship* (Brill, forthcoming).
*Optional/exploratory:*
- Per Faxneld, [“Exchanging Apples: Leonora Carrington and the Pro-Mythical Turn in Post-War Feminism,”](https://correspondencesjournal.com/ojs/ojs/index.php/home/article/view/184) *Correspondences* 11, no. 2 (2023).
#### 4) Deleuzian Psychedelic Sobriety
Sort**Artistic Subject****State Alteration Focus via Erowid****Theoretical Approach**Mescaline drawings by Henri Michaux
Henri Michaux, “From 'Misérable Miracle,'” *The Paris Review*, no. 15 (Winter 1956): 84-105, and accompanying drawings.
[Cannabis- hash](https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Cannabis_Hash.shtml)
[The preparation of charas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfC-mVNzbG0)
Henri Michaux, “Chapter 1: Foreword“ and “Characteristics of Mescaline,“ in *Miserable Miracle* trans. Louise Varèse (City Lights Books, 1972), 5-7 and 29-44.
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, “Memories of a Molecule,“ in *A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia* trans. Brian Massumi (University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 272-286.
Deleuze and Guattari, “November 28, 1947: How Do You Make Yourself a Body without Organs?“ in *A Thousand Plateaus,* 149-66.
#### 5) Raving, Dancing, Trancing
Sort**Artistic Subject****State Alteration Focus via Erowid****Theoretical Approach**Documentary, *If It Were Love,* dir. Patric Chiha (BBC, 2020).
*Optional/exploratory:*
- Datura, [*Eternity*](https://www.discogs.com/release/106189-Datura-Eternity?srsltid=AfmBOoqyQ15TJFVbN7IJLVu7ktsd-V8nlWZLU_gF-Z_L_dixH6PlkpFO) (album), TRANCE Records, 1993.
[MDMA/Ecstasy](https://erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_MDMA.shtml)
Emma Warren, “Smoke and Strobes,” in *Dance Your Way Home: A Journey Through the Dancefloor* (Faber, 2024).
Luis Manuel García-Mispireta, “The Sweetness of Coming Undone,” in *Together, Somehow: Music, Affect, and Intimacy on the Dancefloor* (Duke University Press. 2023).
*Optional/exploratory:*
- Luke Turner, [“The Academisation of Rave: Is Everyone Talking About Dancing, Rather Than Doing It?”](https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/black-sky-thinking/clubbing-dancefloor-utopia-raving-academia/) *The Quietus*, October 17, 2024.
- Sarah Raine, [“An Old School Stomper: Reflections on Place, Identity, and Drugs and the Fluctuating Roles of the Participating Ethnographer,”](https://dj.dancecult.net/index.php/dancecult/article/view/1284) *Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture* 16, no. 1 (2024).
- Jakub R. Matyja, [“Embodied Music Cognition: Trouble Ahead, Trouble Behind,”](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01891/full) *Frontiers in Psychology* 7 (2016).
- Olivia Miller, [“Study with Ravers Suggests Psychedelics Linked to Social Bonding and Prosocial Behaviours,”](https://www.kent.ac.uk/news/society/29791/study-with-ravers-suggests-psychedelics-linked-to-social-bonding-and-prosocial-behaviours) *News Centre*, University of Kent, September 27, 2021.
- Thomas Schäfer and Patricia Kreuzburg, [“The Effects of Dancing to Electronic Music and the Additional Intake of Psychoactive Drugs on the Experience of Trance,”](https://econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/10.1024/2673-8627/a000033) *European Journal of Psychology Open* 81, no. 4 (2023).
#### 6) Pranayama, Breathwork, CO2
Sort**Artistic Subject****State Alteration Focus via Erowid****Theoretical Approach**B. K. S. Iyengar, *Light on Prāṇāyāma: The Yogic Art of Breathing* (Crossroad, 1981).
Stanislav Grof and Christina Grof, *Holotropic Breathwork: A New Approach to Self-Exploration and Therapy* (State University of New York Press, 2010).
[Carbogen](https://erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Carbogen.shtml)
[CO2](https://erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Carbon_Dioxide.shtml)
L. Nivethitha et al, [“Cerebrovascular Hemodynamics during Pranayama Techniques,”](https://doi.org/10.4103/0976-3147.193532) *Journal of Neurosciences in Rural Practice* 8, no. 1 (2017): 60–63.
*Optional/exploratory:*
- Guy W. Fincham et al, [“High ventilation breathwork practices: An overview of their effects, mechanisms, and considerations for clinical applications,”](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2023.105453) *Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews* 155 (2023).
- Yafit Kedar et al, [“Hypoxia in Paleolithic Decorated Caves: The Use of Artificial Light in Deep Caves Reduces Oxygen Concentration and Induces Altered States of Consciousness,”](https://doi.org/10.1080/1751696X.2021.1903177) *Time and Mind* 14, no. 2 (April 3, 2021): 181–216.
- Richard P. Brown and Patricia L. Gerbarg, [“Sudarshan Kriya Yogic Breathing in the Treatment of Stress, Anxiety, and Depression: Part II—Clinical Applications and Guidelines,”](https://doi.org/10.1089/acm.2005.11.711) *The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine* 11, no. 4 (August 2005): 711–17.
### Psychedelics Beyond Psychedelics (2025-2026) expand\_more
The Psychedelics Beyond Psychedelics reading group was organized and facilitated by Emily Lippold-Cheney (MDiv II), Paula Ortiz (MDiv III), and Lila Rimalovski (MDiv II). The reading group explored the ways in which psychedelic experiences without ingestion of psychedelic substances might offer the field of Psychedelic Studies a holistic and just approach to transcendence, healing, and divine connection. In doing so, we sought to engage across disciplines in order to weird, queer, and transcend the definitions and frameworks that we may have consciously and unconsciously imposed upon our understanding of what is and isn’t “psychedelic.” We examined modalities of transcendence–such as sound, childbirth, divination, and clowning–to explore capacities, practices, and potentials that are core to human and non-human cultures. We brought these topics into conversation with the psychedelic humanities by bringing the ideas they offer to the current landscape of the field, while using frameworks core to Psychedelic Studies in our examination of these topics (e.g. set and setting, medical ontologies).
### Fall 2025
#### 1) Introduction to the Psychedelic Humanities
##### Defining the discipline:
Jeffrey Kripal, *The Superhumanities: Historical Precedents, Moral Objections, New Realities* (University of Chicago Press, 2022), Chapter 1.
J Halberstam, *The Queer Art of Failure* (Duke University Press, 2011), Introduction.
##### Ethics and politics:
Christine Hauskeller et al., ["Decolonization is a metaphor towards a different ethic. The case from psychedelic studies,"](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1080/03080188.2022.2122788) *Interdisciplinary Science Reviews* 48, no. 5 (2023): 732-751.
Unidos de Médicos Indígenas Yageceros de la Amazonía Colombiana (UMIYAC), ["Declaration about cultural appropriation from the spiritual authorities, representatives and indigenous organizations of the amazon region"](https://umiyac.org/2019/11/01/declaration-about-cultural-appropriation-from-the-spiritual-authorities-representatives-and-indigenous-organizations-of-the-amazon-region/?lang=en) (2019).
Yuria Celidwen et al., ["Ethical principles of traditional Indigenous medicine to guide western psychedelic research and practice,"](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanam/article/PIIS2667-193X(22)00227-7/fulltext) *The Lancet Regional Health* 18 (2023).
##### Bridge:
Nicolas Langlitz, ["What good are psychedelic humanities?"](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1082933/full) *Frontiers in Psychology* 14 (2023).
#### 2) Shamanism
Wilma Mahua Campos and Samantha Black, ["Wilma Mahua Campos, Shipibo Ayahuasquera,"](https://chacruna.net/wilma-mahua-campos-shipibo-ayahuasquera/) *Chacruna* (2021).
Mircea Eliade, [*Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy*](https://archive.org/details/shamanismarchaic0000elia/mode/2up) (Princeton University Press, 1974), Chapter 1. ([a summary of Eliade](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O0eIEJoT5x9RhhaeN8qplphKFhaBUy9SyYkJ9Q1P2Jk/edit?usp=sharing), prepared by Emily Lippold-Cheney)
Evgenia Fotiou, ["The role of Indigenous knowledges in psychedelic sciences,"](https://www.akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/4/1/article-p16.xml) *Journal of Psychedelic Studies* 4, no. 1 (2019): 16-23.
Jane C. Hu, ["Shamanism and psychedelics: 5 Questions for Manvir Singh,"](https://themicrodose.substack.com/p/shamanism-and-psychedelics-5-questions) *The Microdose* (June 16, 2025).
Alex Gearin, *Global Ayahuasca: Wondrous Visions and Modern Worlds* (Stanford University Press, 2024), "Global Shamanic Tourism in Peru."
Eric Mortensen, ["The Ongoing Harm of the Term Shamanism: From Problematic Scholarly Misnomer to Evolving Cultural Appropriation,"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS9zjv_wV6Q) Uses and Abuses of Power in Alternative Spiritualities Conference, Cambridge, MA, 2023.
#### 3) Ecological Kinship
Yuria Celidwen & Dacher Keltner, ["Kin relationality and ecological belonging: a cultural psychology of Indigenous transcendence,"](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.994508/full) *Frontiers in Psychology* 14 (2023).
Hannes Kettner et al., [“From Egoism to Ecoism: Psychedelics Increase Nature Relatedness in a State-Mediated and Context-Dependent Manner,”](https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/24/5147?type=check_update&version=3) *International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health* 16, no. 24 (2019).
Christine E. Webb, ["The Most Dangerous Animal on Earth? The One That Forgot It's an Animal,"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqLcpadgtGM) The Next Big Idea Podcast (September 3, 2025).
ed. John Ryan, Patrícia Vieira, & Monica Gagliano, *The Mind of Plants: Narratives of Vegetal Intelligence* (Synergetic Press, 2025)*,* “Passionflower” & “Peyote”.
#### 4) Eroticism
Audre Lorde, ["Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power"](https://uk.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/11881_Chapter_5.pdf) (1984 in *Sister Outsider,* 1978 as paper delivered at the Fourth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women).
ed. Molly B. Simmons and Emily Marie Passos Duffy, *The Holy Hour: An Anthology on Sex Work, Magic, and the Divine* (Working Girls Press, 2024), "A Note from the Editors" and "Dreaming the Revolutionary Sacred Whore: Doing the Work of the Goddex" by Britta Love.
[Psychedelic Sex Worker Q&A](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YRsIEkg4wg_HhQTumsdHmrdUt7X2p1aQ/view?usp=sharing) (fieldwork notes by Emily Lippold-Cheney).
Jenny Wade, *Transcendent Sex: When Lovemaking Opens the Veil* (Pocket Books, 2004), "Why Didn't Anyone Tell Us About This Before? The Dark Side of Transcendent Sex."
#### 5) Sound
María Sabina, [*Mushroom Ceremony of the Mazatec Indians of Mexico*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsolGtuwvYU&list=OLAK5uy_kk6lSn7SejgbkX5OoY5Dc3x1gzj-uLGXU&index=3) (Folkways Records, 1957).
["Icaros, Shaman Songs & Plant Music: Susana Bustos,”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1twYNn6DpA&t=119s) *EntheoNation,* Visionary Interview Series (July 28, 2016).
Marc Shapiro, ["Inside the Johns Hopkins Psilocybin Playlist,"](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/articles/2020/10/inside-the-johns-hopkins-psilocybin-playlist) *Johns Hopkins Medicine* (October 30, 2020).
Brandon LaBelle, ["Towards Acoustic Justice,"](https://www.uowoajournals.org/ltc/article/id/730/) *Law Text Culture* 24, no. 1 (2020): 550-572.
Riya,[ "Spectator to Spect-actor: Audience Engagement in Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed,"](https://www.the-criterion.com/V15/n3/WL02.pdf) *The Criterion: An International Journal in English* 15, no. 3 (June 2024).
### Spring 2026
#### 1) AI/technological advancement
["Erik Davis on technology and myth,"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr5Sk8t5VN8) *TANKtv,* Tank Magazine Podcast (November 29, 2024)
Sadie Plant, *Zeros + Ones: Digital Women + the New Technoculture* (Fourth Estate, 1997), "Cocoons."
Terence McKenna, ["Psychedelics in the Age of Intelligent Machines,"](https://www.organism.earth/library/document/psychedelics-in-the-age-of-intelligent-machines) lecture (April 22, 1999).
Ursula Franklin, *The Real World of Technology* (House of Anansi Press, 1992), Chapter 1.
#### 2) Madness
Wouter Kusters, *A Philosophy of Madness* trans. Nancy Forest-Flier (MIT Press, 2020), Introduction.
Inside Schizophrenia, ["What is Schizophrenia?"](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-inside-schizophrenia-62392544/episode/what-is-schizophrenia-62423414/) (May 29, 2019).
#### 3) War
Brian Pace, [“Jake Angeli: The Psychedelic Guru Who Stormed the Capitol,”](https://www.psymposia.com/magazine/jake-angeli-psychedelic-shaman-capitol-insurrection-trump/) Psymposia (January 7, 2021).
On the historical relationship between psychedelics and war:
- (stronger focus on policy) Russell Hausfeld, ["The Ecstasy of Agony. Part I: A Long Strange Loop,"](https://www.truthdig.com/articles/a-long-strange-loop/) *Truthdig* (November 1, 2022).
- (includes more first-hand experiences) John Semley, ["A Drug Against War: The militarization of Ecstasy,"](https://thebaffler.com/salvos/a-drug-against-war-semley) *The Baffler* 74 (June 2024).
Dalton Trumbo, *johnny got his gun* (Citadel, 1939), "Introduction" by Ron Kovic (1990) & Chapters 7-8.
#### 4) Birthing and Mothering
Dana Raphael, [*The Tender Gift: Breastfeeding*](https://archive.org/details/tendergiftbreast0000raph/page/n5/mode/2up) (Prentice-Hall, 1973), pp. 15-25, skim 147-161.
Elisabeth Berger Bolaza, [“Birth Pleasure: Meanings, Politics, & Practice,”](https://jarm.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jarm/article/view/40595) *Journal of the Motherhood Initiative* 11, no. 1 (2020). \[CW: Ina May as problematic elder\]
Ellen Dissanyake, [“Ritual and Ritualization: Musical Means of Conveying and Shaping Emotion in Humans and Other Animals,”](https://ellendissanayake.com/publications/pdf/RitualAndRitualization_EllenDissanayake%20.pdf) in *Music and manipulation: on the social uses and social control of music* ed. Steven Brown and Ulrich Voglsten (Berghahn Book, 2006).
Mariavittoria Mangini and Erika Dyck, ["An Interview with Mariavittoria Mangini,"](https://chacruna.net/interview-with-mariavittoria-mangini/) *Chacruna* (September 23, 2020).
Photos from El Museo del Mundo Maya exhibit: ["Parto Bordado,"](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qtMNaOwjPdSsmnyMHlS2GrRElg1GBX2e/view) Image [description](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ni9Osx3ERn5EWrPIvNYs3aThg4Zglbbk/view?usp=sharing).
#### 5) Grief, Loss, and Death
Judith Butler, The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind (Verso, 2020), “Nonviolence, Grievability, & the Critique of Individualism."
Martin Prechtel, The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise (North Atlantic Books, 2015), "Grief is a Shameless Dreamer & 4: Grief Is Praise."
Kai Cheng Thom, *I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl’s Notes From the End of the World* (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2019), "Genie, You’re Free: Robin Williams, Mental Health, and the Stories We Tell About Suicide."
Laura Huxley, [Letter to Julia and Juliette Huxley](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QxQOgghOBO1wk0U0xxkFU9jH0Te1PJm0/view?usp=sharing) (December 8, 1963). \[Aldous Huxley's last week of life\]
Fiona Low and Mitch Earleywine, ["Psychedelic Experiences After Bereavement Improve Symptoms of Grief: The Influence of Emotional Breakthroughs and Challenging Experiences,"](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02791072.2023.2228303) *Journal of Psychoactive Drugs* 56, no. 3 (2024): 316-323.
Yvan Beaussant et al., ["Psilocybin-assisted therapy for demoralisation in hospice patients: feasibility, safety and preliminary efficacy,"](https://spcare.bmj.com/content/16/2/423) *BMJ Supportive and Palliative Care* 16, no. 2 (2026): 423-433.
#### 6) Clowning, and concluding
Viktor Turner, “Liminality and Communitas: Forms and Attributes of Rites of Passage,” in *The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure* (Routledge, 2017).
Lucy Amsden, [“'When they laugh your clown Is coming': learning to be ridiculous in Philippe Gaulier's pedagogy of spectatorship,”](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19443927.2015.1133445) *Theatre, Dance and Performance Training* 7, no, 1 (2016): 4-16.
Johanna Skibsrud, "Touching the Impossible: A Conversation with Slava Polunin," in *Fool* (Routledge, 2023).
### Archival Methods: Finding the Sacred and the Profane in the Psychedelic Archive (Spring 2025) expand\_more
This workshop explored the Ludlow-Santo Domingo Library, the world’s largest collection of psychedelic literature, housed at Harvard. It was organized and led by Andrew Green Hannon.
This workshop was designed to support your own encounter, engagement, and exploration with the archive and its materials. The group's explorations were informed by a commitment to multiple ways of knowing: textual, sociological, experiential, and material.
The Ludlow-Santo Domingo collection is extraordinary in its breadth—both geographic and temporal—and in the multitude of religious traditions seen through the lens of drugs. This resource has been at Harvard for some time, but large swaths of it remain virtually untouched. It has within it materials that range from the new religious movements inspired by psychedelia, including Timothy Leary League for Spiritual Discovery, electronic neo-shamanism of the turn of the twenty-first century, and the contemporary enthusiasm for ayahuasca, to accounts of the religious traditions of the peoples of the Americas around the time of European contact, and the records of colonialism and suppression of Indigenous religious practices. There are also materials from India, Tibet, Nepal, and North Africa, as well as from Jewish and Muslim religious traditions.
Dr. Hannon holds a PhD in American Studies from Yale University. He has taught history, American Studies, and labor studies at UMASS Boston and Emerson College. His research focuses on performance and politics in the American Counterculture. He is the chief curator of the forthcoming 2027 exhibit, “Let's Take a Trip Together: A Long History of Psychedelics,” at the Houghton Library.
The workshop looked at practical questions of the archive:
- How do you find archives you are interested in?
- How do you search online to find aids and databases, and what are the limitations of those tools?
- How do you authenticate objects and think about the limitations of sources?
The workshop also explored philosophical questions about archival work:
- What is an archive?
- What are the ethical issues raised by encountering trip reports, childhood drawings, and psychological profiles?
- What is the role of class in the creation and maintenance of objects in the historical record?
## Psychedelics and the Future of Religion
In 2020, the Center launched its online speakers series *Psychedelics and the Future of Religion*. The series hosted dozens of events with leading scholars working at the intersection of psychedelics and religion.
Select videos from the series are below. The entire series is accessible on the [CSWR YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX_9feVneSp1TWf6LNdYOhFzuEvuG7fKS) and the [HDS YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/@HarvardDivinity/search?query=psychedelics%20).
[### Psychedelics: The Ancient Religion with No Name?
](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8VCBNGBeqg)
[### Psilocybin & Mystical Experience: Implications for Healthy Psychological Functioning & Spirituality
](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g2PS_yp-nQ)
[### Global Ayahuasca: A Book Talk with Anthropologist Alex Gearin
](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEUj_WH3Yzs&list=PLX_9feVneSp1TWf6LNdYOhFzuEvuG7fKS&index=2)
[### Transcendence, Transformation, and Trans-Psychedelia with Hil Malatino and Susan Stryker
](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEtFdD8TTRA&list=PLX_9feVneSp1TWf6LNdYOhFzuEvuG7fKS&index=3)
## Art Exhibits and Digital Displays
Program affiliates led digital displays and in-Center art exhibits that represented a visually compelling and accessible approach to scholarship.
[### Art Exhibit: Initiated by the Spirits
](https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/3/4/video-initiated-spirits-fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9rique-apffel-marglin-phd-randy-chung-gonzales)
[### Sacred Plants of the Muysca
](https://www.ubazagasqua.com/)
[### Sacred Plants and Fungi of the Americas
](https://www.sacredplantsamericas.com/)
## Public Programming
[### How Psychedelic Science Invented a History of Religion
](/news/2026/05/26/how-psychedelic-science-invented-history-religion) May 26, 2026
Edited by Aaron Michael Ullrey The following Research Reflection is part of an ongoing series spotlighting the academic study of religions. It is challenging for me to imagine a time before the concept of “the psychedelic” existed, despite its emergence...
[### Video: Global Ayahuasca: A Book Talk with Anthropologist Alex Gearin
](/news/2026/03/26/video-global-ayahuasca-book-talk-anthropologist-alex-gearin) March 26, 2026
Ayahuasca originated in the Amazon and has long been considered sacred by many Indigenous and mestizo communities across South America. Fueled by the “psychedelic renaissance” and growing interest in its visionary and healing potential, groups serving the...
[### Video: Transcendence, Transformation, and Trans-Psychedelia with Hil Malatino and Susan Stryker
](/news/2026/02/26/video-transcendence-transformation-and-trans-psychedelia-hil-malatino-and-susan) February 26, 2026
Public conversations about both psychedelics and gender transition have often been constrained by two parallel limits: a focus on clinical applications and the presumption that those who take psychedelics or change gender do so primarily as “patients.”...
[### Resacralizing Contemporary Psychedelic Practice: Reflections on Tending the Spiritual in Psychedelic Care for Community Settings
](/news/2026/02/02/resacralizing-contemporary-psychedelic-practice-reflections-tending-spiritual) February 02, 2026
During the final days of the Fall 2025 semester, I huddled in the conference room at the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR) over blueberry muffins while snowflakes dusted the garden outside. I sat in a circle with thirty strangers—clinical...
[### Center for the Study of World Religions Brings Psychedelic Chaplaincy to the Forefront
](/news/2026/02/02/center-study-world-religions-brings-psychedelic-chaplaincy-forefront) February 02, 2026
Photos by Jeffrey Blackwell A global resurgence of scientific, medical, and public interest in the therapeutic and transformational potential of psychedelic drugs, plants, and fungi is raising questions about the availability of spiritually responsive...
[### The Holy Inquisition and the Genesis of Seventeenth-Century Peyote Banning
](/news/2025/12/03/holy-inquisition-and-genesis-seventeenth-century-peyote-banning) December 03, 2025
Edited by Aaron Michael Ullrey The following Research Reflection is part of an ongoing series spotlighting the academic study of religions. In 2022, a previously unknown European-style manuscript came to light at an auction held in Bogotá, Colombia: “Don...
[### Raving, Recreation, & Religion with Michelle Lhooq and Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta
](/news/2025/11/05/raving-recreation-religion-michelle-lhooq-and-luis-manuel-garcia-mispireta) November 05, 2025
According to the 2024 Global Psychedelic Survey, while personal growth and well-being are common reasons for illicit drug use, recreation—music events, festivals, parties, raves—remains a leading but poorly defined motive. This panel featured Michelle...
[### What Makes Psychedelic Experiences Sacred?
](/news/2025/10/21/what-makes-psychedelic-experiences-sacred) October 21, 2025
Edited by Aaron Michael Ullrey. The following Research Reflection is part of an ongoing series spotlighting the academic study of religions. In my research on novel psychedelic spiritual communities (NPSCs) in North America, my interlocutors regularly...
[### Video: Shamanism: The Timeless Religion – a Conversation Between Manvir Singh and Charles Stang
](/news/2025/10/15/video-shamanism-timeless-religion-conversation-between-manvir-singh-and-charles) October 15, 2025
Anthropologist Manvir Singh, PhD, joined Professor Charles Stang for a conversation about Singh’s new book, Shamanism: The Timeless Religion (Knopf, 2025), which draws on immersive research with shamans in Indonesia and the Colombian Amazon. Singh...
[### Center for the Study of World Religions Releases Report on Psychedelic Facilitation Training
](/news/2025/07/23/center-study-world-religions-releases-report-psychedelic-facilitation-training) July 23, 2025
The Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR) at Harvard Divinity School has released “Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Training in the US: A Landscape Analysis,” an assessment of the current state of psychedelic facilitation training programs across the...
[### Charting Novel Psychedelic Spiritual Communities
](/news/2025/03/charting-novel-psychedelic-spiritual-communities-0) March 17, 2025
Novel psychedelic spiritual communities are often radically inclusive spiritual communities that do not require members to have the same beliefs. They set forth pluralistic, non-binding doctrines, whose common belief is the possibility that psychedelics...
[### Unveiling the Mystical: How Scholars Are Advancing Psychedelics Study
](/news/2025/03/unveiling-mystical-how-scholars-are-advancing-psychedelics-study) March 04, 2025
By Jeffrey Blackwell The term “psychedelics” can conjure surreal images of mind-altering journeys through a mystical realm that connects the body to the soul and the soul to divinity. Dreamlike visions can pave the way for healing and transcendence...
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