Journal of Psychedelic Studies
January 16, 2023
Anna Lutkajtis, Jules Evans
58 citations
Abstract This article reports on integration challenges that were experienced by nine individuals who attended a three-day legal psilocybin truffle retreat in the Netherlands. The study employed a qualitative phenomenological approach, using semi-structured interviews to gain an understanding of participants' ( n = 30) psilocybin experiences and their after-effects. While the study did not...
Fieldwork in Religion
May 19, 2022
Anna Lutkajtis
Luke, David and Rory Spowers, eds. 2021. DMT Entity Encounters: Dialogues on the Spirit Molecule. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press. xiv + 370 pp. ISBN: 978-1-64411-233-5 (pbk)
International Journal for the Study of New Religions
March 23, 2022
Anna Lutkajtis
3 citations
Recently there has been a surge of renewed interest in the psychedelic compound psilocybin. In particular, psilocybin is being studied in clinical settings as a potential breakthrough treatment for depression. Alongside this growing therapeutic interest, there has been a rise in the religious use of psilocybin, as evidenced by the creation of a number of psilocybin mushroom churches in the...
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
April 16, 2021
Anna Lutkajtis
13 citations
Abstract This article reports on the experiences of four healthy individuals who attended a legal psilocybin truffle retreat in the Netherlands. The study employed a qualitative phenomenological approach, using semi-structured interviews to gain an understanding of participants' psilocybin experiences and their after-effects. The experiential themes that emerged from these case studies closely...
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
January 15, 2021
Anna Lutkajtis
32 citations
AbstractResearch suggests that the clinical and therapeutic effects of psychedelics are related to their ability to induce a mystical-type experience. One particularly interesting feature of the psychedelic mystical experience is the entity encounter - people who take psychedelics sometimes describe meetings with seemingly autonomous entities which appear to possess intelligence and agency....
Fieldwork in Religion
March 31, 2020
Anna Lutkajtis
20 citations
Mushrooms containing psilocybin have been used in Indigenous healing ceremonies in Mesoamerica since at least the sixteenth century. However, the sacramental use of mushrooms was only discovered by Westerners in the early to mid-twentieth century. Most notably, the meeting between amateur mycologist Robert Gordon Wasson and Mazatec curandera María Sabina in 1955 resulted in the widespread...
Journal for the Academic Study of Religion
September 9, 2019
Anna Lutkajtis
The current popularity of ‘secular’ meditation has been due in large part to its promotion in the mainstream Western media. In 1975 Time magazine ran a cover featuring an image of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of Transcendental Meditation (TM) along with the headline: ‘Meditation: The Answer to All Your Problems?’ Ever since, stories about meditation have captured the attention of a...
Journal for the Academic Study of Religion
February 5, 2019
Anna Lutkajtis
In contemporary Western society, meditation techniques that were previously taught within the context of Eastern religious traditions are now increasingly being practiced in secular settings. While the boundary between the secular and the religious is blurred, popular meditation techniques such as Transcendental Meditation, vipassana, and mindfulness are generally promoted as being derived from...