Luis Eduardo Luna and Jeffrey Breau, CSWR, Psychedelic Intersections: 2024 Conference Anthology Drawing from Luis Eduardo Luna’s keynote address at the 2024 “Psychedelic Intersections” conference, this interview essay explores Luna’s research on ayahuasca since the 1970s, his study of Indigenous cosmology and healing in South America, and his own spiritual development alongside these sacred plants….
“Introduction: Crossroads of Psychedelic Studies”
Jeffrey Breau and Paul Gillis-Smith, CSWR, Psychedelic Intersections: 2024 Conference Anthology This essay provides an introduction for the CSWR’s new publication, the Psychedelic Intersections Conference Anthology. Co-editors Jeffrey Breau and Paul Gillis-Smith set the ground for the the volume, approaching psychedelics intersectionally and with interdisciplinarity. They introduce the themes of the volumes essays: psychedelics and…
Psychedelic Intersections: 2024 Conference Anthology
Jeffrey Breau and Paul Gillis-Smith, CSWR, Psychedelic Intersections: 2024 Conference Anthology The Psychedelic Intersections: 2024 Conference Anthology presents interdisciplinary research from scholars and practitioners working at the crossroads of psychedelics, religion, medicine, race, Indigeneity, law, and the underground, history, anthropology, and beyond. Edited by Jeffrey Breau and Paul Gillis-Smith, the Anthology expands on research presented…
“Just Call it Weed: On Arabic Edibles”
Adam Bremer-McCollum, CSWR, Research Reflection Drifters might call it “the Sufis’ well-known.” Women singers call it “branches of bliss.” Others call it “bush of rapture” and “bush of understanding.” The use of cannabis or “hemp” for rope making was long known, and rope makers, in fact, had their own moniker for weed, “the load-lightener,” as…
A Decolonial Lens on Psychedelic Ethics Symposium
CSWR, Event Recording To conclude the ‘Psychedelics and Ethics’ series, visiting scholar Christine Hauskeller facilitated a symposium that explored material covered during the psychedelic ethics and decoloniality workshop. This symposium focused on the harm caused by colonizing practices in the psychedelic space, particularly their impact on plants and animals, Indigenous groups, and underground practitioners….
Lisa Bieberman and the Moral Challenge of LSD: Revising Harvard’s History of Psychedelics
Research Reflections // Center for the Study of World Religions CSWR Psychedelics and Spirituality Program Lead Paul Gillis-Smith illuminates the work and life of Lisa Bieberman, a figure from the history of psychedelics at Harvard in the ’60s. Bieberman’s memoir offers an alternate history of psychedelics in Cambridge at the time and a moral challenge…
“Science Standards Fail Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy”
Christine Hauskeller, CSWR, Research Reflection CSWR Visiting Scholar Christine Hauskeller argues that the methodological requirements for large-scale clinical trials attempt to standardize and control every aspect of a new treatment in order to derive generalizable data. More research is needed to calibrate psychedelic-assisted psychotherapies treatments and identify the best treatment for different patients….
Intersections with Indigeneity in Psychedelic Buddhism
Colin Simonds, CSWR Psychedelic Intersections: 2024 Conference Anthology This paper critically analyzes two approaches to Psychedelic Buddhism by Buddhist teachers Mike Crowley and Spring Washam and explores how these teachers think through, talk about, and engage with the Indigenous communities from which their practices originate….
Psychedelic therapies: healing for the wrong reasons?
Eduardo Schenberg, Christine Hauskeller, Claudia Gertraud Schwarz, and Franklin King IV, Nature Mental Health When critically examining the assertion that biomedical treatments work for the ‘right’ reasons compared with alternative approaches, philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers1 coined the phrase ‘healing for the wrong reasons’. Here, we discuss the cognitive dissonances and regulatory misalignments apparent in the…
Xochipilli: Psychedelic Plants, Song, and Ritual in Aztec Religion
Osiris González Romero, CSWR Theosis Xochipilli, a deity linked to songs, flowers, the rising sun, joy, games, and fertility, holds profound significance in Aztec religion. Historical sources characterize this deity as revered by nobles, elite principals, and guilds of artists, revered in both masculine and feminine forms. Yet Xochipilli is an understudied deity. This essay offers…