Psychedelic Intersections
January 17, 2025
Colin H. Simonds
1 citation
Approaches to Psychedelic Buddhism are at times extractive, at times collaborative; they at times respect roots and lineages, and at times innovate, eschewing traditional practices. By analyzing them through the Indigenous logics of authority found in Indigenous plant medicine communities and the Buddhist tradition, we can better understand novel syncretic psychedelic traditions and work...
Psychedelic Intersections
January 17, 2025
Jeffrey A. Breau
1 citation
At Burning Man 2023, the Cloud-9 Camp’s night-long ceremony with the psychedelic 2C-B (4-bromo-2, 5-dimethoxyphenethylamine) began with one question: “Would anyone like to speak a word of intention? Just one word—for yourself, for this journey.” This question marked the start of their intention-setting ritual and their entrance into the psychedelically altered state of consciousness. Intention...
Psychedelic Intersections
January 17, 2025
Michelle Lhooq
This essay uses the concept of cringe as a tool to assess where the rave scene has gone stale and to argue for ways it may reclaim a transcendent spirit. While we may never be able to fully escape the cringe, the powerful emotions it signals can serve as a shock collar, alerting us to behaviors and beliefs that were perhaps once radical but have since become outdated and cliche. In this way, I...
Psychedelic Intersections
January 17, 2025
Osiris S González-Romero
Analyzing research into Xochipilli—a deity deity linked to songs, flowers, the rising sun, joy, games, and fertility—requires diverse methodologies, including historiography, iconography, and philology, all of which aid in understanding this deity in the Aztec worldview. This analysis provides fresh interpretations of rituals involving psychedelic plants associated with Xochipilli; these...
Psychedelic Intersections
January 17, 2025
J. Christian Greer
This article demonstrates how “counterculture” remains a poorly defined way to talk about rapidly developing milieux, scenes, and networks born out of the religious awakening stimulated by psychedelics in the mid-1960s. It proposes an alternative framework of “psychedelicism” to better understand the nuances and complexity of historical and contemporary psychedelic communities.
Psychedelic Intersections
January 17, 2025
Alex K. Gearin
The spaces where psychedelic experiences unfold are never neutral. Whether in dense forests, urban retreats, or clinical settings, these environments shape how psychedelic senses and emotions are experienced. I propose “psychedelic atmospherics” as a concept to explore the affective and perceptual experience of different settings of psychedelic usage. Psychedelic atmospherics offers a lens for...
Psychedelic Intersections
January 17, 2025
Victoria Litman
The law and policy surrounding psychedelic substances in the United States is in its infancy. At the time of writing, two states, Oregon and Colorado, have passed laws that create legal access points for regulated psychedelic substances and do not require a doctor’s recommendation or prescription for access. Several psychedelic substances are also being researched by pharmaceutical companies in...
Psychedelic Intersections
January 17, 2025
Brad Stoddard
Ethnographic research suggests that people across the United States are increasingly gathering to commune with their creators, to interact with their ancestors, to enter the spirit world, to gain supernatural insights, and to engage in what they otherwise describe as religious or spiritual experiences. In this regard, their actions are not particularly revolutionary or novel. What distinguishes...
Psychedelic Intersections
January 17, 2025
Jeffrey A. Breau, Paul Gillis-Smith
Since the 1960s, Harvard Divinity School has been an influential hub of research on psychedelics and religion. Yet, in many ways, the work of building a rich scholarly community around this area of study is just beginning. The Psychedelic Intersections: 2024 Conference Anthology is one step in that larger project. This volume is drawn from Harvard’s “Psychedelic Intersections: Cross-cultural...
Psychedelic Intersections
January 17, 2025
Franklin King Iv
Psychedelics can evoke powerful projections not only for those under the influence of these substances but also for those who study them. As Timothy Leary once quipped, “LSD [is a psychedelic drug that] occasionally causes psychotic behavior in people who have not taken it.” This speaks to how the idea of psychedelics can be polarizing, political, and often poorly defined. While psychedelic...
Psychedelic Intersections
January 17, 2025
Julián Sánchez González
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...
Psychedelic Intersections
January 17, 2025
Candace Oglesby, Yvan Beaussant
This paper presents insights from the Psychedelic Therapists Diversity (PTD) study, a qualitative study conducted to understand how BIPOC therapists perceive psychedelic therapy and research. The inciting incident for this research occurred during our collaboration on a clinical trial of psilocybin-assisted therapy for depression in cancer patients.1 Candace Oglesby was the only therapist of...