Julián Sánchez González, CSWR, Psychedelic Intersections: 2024 Conference Anthology 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…
“The Interconnection of Psychedelic Spirituality, Social Justice, and BIPOC Therapist Engagement in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy”
Candace Oglesby and Yvan Beaussant, CSWR, Psychedelic Intersections: 2024 Conference Anthology Candace Oglesby and Yvan Beaussant 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…
“Relationality in Psychedelic Facilitation Training Programs: The UC Berkeley Case”
Moana Meadow, CSWR, Psychedelic Intersections: 2024 Conference Anthology Moana Meadow’s essay demonstrates how the Berkeley Psychedelic Facilitation Certificate Program trains psychedelic facilitators through a relational and culturally sensitive approach….
“Facilitating the Sacred: The Role of Chaplains in Psychedelic Law and Policy”
Victoria Litman, CSWR, Psychedelic Intersections: 2024 Conference Anthology Victoria Litman, the Petrie-Flom Center Fellow in Psychedelic Law and Spirituality, argues 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…
“Psychedelic Projections: Hidden Narratives Shaping Psychedelic Medicine”
Franklin King, CSWR, Psychedelic Intersections: 2024 Conference Anthology Franklin King draws from his experience as a Mass General Hospital psychiatrist to explore the hidden narratives often underlying conversations about psychedelics. King argues that revealing these narratives is necessary to understand disagreements about psychedelic treatment and the ways that psychedelics become metonyms for larger philosophical and…
“Toward a Psychedelic Theodicy: Psychedelic Biomedicine and the Concept of ‘Risk'”
Sharday Mosurinjohn, CSWR, Psychedelic Intersections: 2024 Conference Anthology Sharday Mosurinjohn 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….
“Psychedelic Atmospherics”
Alex Gearin, CSWR, Psychedelic Intersections: 2024 Conference Anthology Alex Gearin 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…
“The Soma Question: Interrogating the History of Psychedelics with Sanskrit Mantras”
Finnian Moore-Gerety, CSWR, Psychedelic Intersections: 2024 Conference Anthology Finnian Moore Gerety 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…
“God’s Pharmacy: On the Use of Entheogens in Jewish Mystical Traditions”
Anna Sierka, CSWR, Psychedelic Intersections: 2024 Conference Anthology Anna Sierka 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…
“From Messiah to Mushroom: A Brief History of John Marco Allegro’s The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross”
Geoffrey Smith, CSWR, Psychedelic Intersections: 2024 Conference Anthology 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…