Prelude
Entheogens & Early Religion
All I am suggesting is that the mescalin[e] experience is what Catholic theologians call “A gratuitous grace,” not necessary to salvation but potentially helpful and to be accepted thankfully, if made available. To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and the inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large — this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone and especially to the intellectual.
— Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception (1954)
Although the first entheogen case decided in the United States dates from only 1926, people have employed psychotropic plants, cacti and mushrooms to attain visionary states during religious ceremonies and rituals for millenia.1 Three of the best known psychotropics, with longstanding links to religious use, are peyote, mushrooms, and Cannabis.2
Peyote, a cactus (Lophophora williamsii) native to Northeastern Mexico, has been ingested by Indians during religious ceremonies for at least two thousand years and archeological specimens suggest its ceremonial use may date back as many as eight thousand years.”3
Mushrooms, of the genus Psilocybe, were used to produce visionary states at least as early as 4000 BC. The Psilocybe mushroom was used in religious ceremonies long before the Aztec civilization. It was named teonanácatl, meaning “God’s flesh,” “wondrous mushroom” or “sacred mushroom.”4
Cannabis has been cultivated for over 10,000 years, making it one of the oldest known cultivated plants. Marijuana and hashish, preparations made from the Cannabis plant, were used in China as early as 2737 BC. Unlike opium, another substance with its roots in the orient, hashish was rarely used medicinally. Instead, its use was largely confined to religious, mystical or spiritual rituals. Use of the Cannabis plant spread to India in 800 BC where Hindus called it “the Heavenly Guide.”
In very recent times, the active principles of these and other flora have been isolated and synthesized. Just four of these isolated compounds, which some people have found to elicit religious cognitions, are mescaline, DMT, LSD and psilocybin.
Mescaline, the psychoactive principle in peyote was isolated in 1896 by Arthur Heffter.5 It was soon synthesized but failed to attract widespread interest until 1954 when novelist Aldous Huxley “one bright May morning, . . swallowed four-tenths of a gram of mescaline” and wrote of the resulting experience in his book, The Doors of Perception.6
DMT (N,N-dimethyl-tryptamine) was first synthesized in 1931, but its psychotropic properties were not discovered until 1956. Later, DMT was found to be the principal psychotropic constituent in numerous snuffs used for millennia by South American shamans. The DMT-containing plant Psychotria viridis is a well-known admixture to the famous psychoactive brew known as ayahuasca or yajé, the ceremonial use of which archeological evidence suggests dates back as many as five thousand years.7
LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide), perhaps the best-known modern entheogen, was created by Dr. Albert Hofmann a chemist employed by Sandoz Laboratories in Basle Switzerland. In 1938, Dr. Hofmann synthesized LSD from a fungus (ergot) commonly infesting rye seeds. Its affect on consciousness remained undiscovered until April 16, 1943, when Dr. Hofmann accidentally ingested a minute amount of the substance and experienced a strange inebriation in which “the external world became changed as in a dream.”8 Several years later, Dr. Hofmann discovered that the chemical structure of LSD is nearly identical to that of the sacred ololiuhqui, prepared from morning glory seeds and used ritually by the Aztecs. It has since been suggested that the ergot fungus may well have been the psychotropic ingredient in the visionary kykeon drink consumed during the Great Mysteries at Eleusis.9
In 1957, working with mushrooms obtained by banker-turned-ethnomycologist (and CIA funded) R. Gordon Wasson from the now famous curandera Maria Sabina, Dr. Hofmann isolated and later synthesized two active substances derived from the Psilocybe mushroom. He named these substances psilocybin and psilocin. With the substances in hand, Dr. Hofmann and Mr. Wasson returned to Mexico and met with Maria Sabina in 1962. During a ceremony, Maria Sabina ingested 30 milligrams of the synthetic psilocybin and later reported that the effect was indistinguishable from that elicited with her sacred mushrooms. The substances psilocybin and psilocin are now known to naturally occur in more than 80 species of mushrooms found worldwide.10
In 1962, the same year that Maria Sabina pronounced synthetic psilocybin to be phenomenological indistinguishable from the effects elicited by the mushrooms used in her ceremonies, a graduate student at Harvard, set out to try and determine the “religious validity” of the experience elicited by psilocybin. The experiment, conducted by Dr. Walter N. Pahnke, later become known as “The Miracle of Marsh Chapel,” or “the Good Friday Experiment.” To perform his study, Dr. Pahnke selected twenty theology students none of whom had ingested a “psychedelic” substance prior to the experiment. All of the students were screened for prior psychological and physical illness. Assistants, knowledgeable of the effects of psilocybin, met with the students to establish a feeling of trust, develop group rapport, and dispel any irrational fears. Having carefully screened and prepared the students, the experiment was conducted on Good Friday, 1962.
On the morning of the experiment the students met at Marsh Chapel on the Harvard campus. Ninety minutes prior to the start of the service, Dr. Pahnke administered twenty identical looking capsules, one to each student. Ten capsules contained thirty milligrams of psilocybin (the same amount earlier given to María Sabina). The other ten capsules contained two hundred milligrams of nicotinic acid, a vitamin that produces feelings of warmth and tingling of the skin, but no pronounced mental effects. Neither Dr. Pahnke nor the students knew the content of any given capsule.
A two-and-one-half-hour religious service was held with the students and their assistants in attendance. The service was conducted in a manner familiar and meaningful to the students, all of whom were from middle-class Protestant backgrounds.
Following the experiment each student was interviewed regarding his experience and completed a 146-item questionnaire. Each student also wrote a detailed phenomenological account of his experience. Six months later, the students were again interviewed, and completed a follow-up questionnaire.
The results of the experiment were significant. Eight out of the ten students who received psilocybin reported what they considered authentic religious experiences. Only one student from the control group that received nicotinic acid reported even a minimal spiritual cognition. Additionally, Dr. Pahnke compared the data derived from the student interviews and questionnaires with nine fundamental characteristics of mystical experience formulated by Dr. W. T. Stace, Professor Emeritus at Princeton, a leading authority on religion and mysticism. Dr. Pahnke concluded, “…under the conditions of this experiment, those subjects who received psilocybin experienced phenomena that were apparently indistinguishable from, if not identical with, certain categories defined by the topology of mystical consciousness.”11
The six-month follow-up was particularly important. One hallmark of religious experience is said to be its lasting effect on the whole of the individual’s life. With respect to this after-effect, Dr. Pahnke reported:
After an admittedly short follow-up period of only six months, life enhancing and life enriching effects, similar to some of those claimed by mystics, were shown by the higher scores of the experimental subjects when compared to the controls. In addition, after four hours of follow-up interviews with each subject, the experimenter was left with the impression that the experience had made a profound impact (especially in terms of religious feeling and thinking) on the lives of eight out of the ten subjects who had been given psilocybin…the direction of change was toward more integrated, self-actualizing attitudes and behavior in life. (Pahnke and Richards 1971)12
Given the general history of religious persecution, including within the United States,13 it’s not surprising that those who have adopted psychoactive plants or chemicals as sacraments or as aids to religious cognitions have frequently come under attack not only by the general populace but also by other religious groups. Ancient Mexican religious rituals centering on the ingestion of psychotropic mushrooms and peyote were, for example, forced deep underground as a result of the Spanish Inquisition. On June 19, 1620, the Holy Office of the Inquisition banned the ingestion of all psychotropic plants, decreeing:
The use of the Herb or Root called Peyote…is a superstitious action and reproved as opposed to the purity and sincerity of our Holy Catholic Faith… We decree that henceforth no person…may use or use of this said herb, this Peyote, or of others for said effects, nor others similar…being warned that doing the contrary, besides incurring said censures and penalties, we will proceed against whoever is rebellious and disobedient, as against persons suspect in the holy Catholic faith.14
It was not until the mid-twentieth century that the mushroom ritual was rediscovered.15 Likewise, members of ancient Greek society participated in the Great Mysteries of Eleusis, consuming a potent psychotropic brew known as the kykeon. After 2000 years of uninterrupted ceremonies, the Christian Emperor Theodosius declared Christianity the official religion of Rome in 380 A.D., and forbid the continuation of non-Christian religions. Later that year a violent mob, led by Christian Priests attacked the Temple of Goddess Demeter in Eleusis, and in 395 A.D. King Alaric dealt the final blow, burning the Eleusinian Sanctuary to the ground.16
Only in the last century, and indeed in the last fifty years, have western scholars begun to uncover the prominent and historical role that psychotropic plants, fungi, and cacti have played in religious ceremonies. At least one scholar of entheogens has deployed the rhetorical term “placebo sacrament”17 to boldly call attention to the fact that people ingested psychotropic sacraments long before the Christian eucharist created during the “Last Supper.”18 As more and more psychotropic plants are discovered, and as new synthetic and artificial substances are created in underground labs, growing numbers of people are asserting that certain of these plants and compounds have the capability of opening a doorway to deeply meaningful religious cognitions.19
How these claims have been adjudicated is the subject of the remainder of this book.
NOTES
1A comprehensive study of 488 societies around the world found that alternative states of consciousness were a “universal human phenomena” institutionalized in a religious framework in over ninety percent of those societies. (Bourguignon 1977). The worldwide history of the ceremonial use of psychotropic flora and plant-based potions is also well documented (Furst 1976), (Schultes and Hofmann 1979), (Ott 1996). Some have suggested that the archaic ingestion of psychoactive fungi may have given birth to the very notion of things “spiritual,” “mystical,” or “religious” (McKenna 1992; Wasson 1968, 1986; La Barre 1975). Indeed, an article by two neuroscientists goes so far as to speculate that religious experience is entirely “brain-based” (Saver & Rabin 1997). The developing field of studying the neural correlates of religious or spiritual experiences has been given the name “neurotheology.”
2 A study completed in 1996 listed over _____ psychotropic flora (Ott, 1996).
3 Richard Glen Boire, Accommodating Religious Users of Controlled Substances: A Model Amendment to the Controlled Substances Act, Journal of Drug Issues, Vol. 24, no. 3, at 467.
4 Id.
5 Some sources attribute the first isolation of mescaline to Louis Lewin in 1888. But, Lewin named his substance “Anhalonin.” Moreover, it is presently thought to have been a mixture of several alkaloids, rather than pure mescaline. JONATHAN OTT, PHARMACOTHEON 86 (Natural Products Co. 1993).
6 Aldous Huxley, Doors of Perception, 1954.
7 Ott 199_ page???
8 Id. at 119.
9 Cite..Try Road to Eleusis Id. at 143.
10 Ott 1996 ____ or Stamets?
11 Pahnke and Richards, page?
12 Dr. Rick Doblin performed a follow-up study of the participants twenty-five years after the original experiment. The participants “reported a substantial amount of persistent positive effects and no significant long-term negative effects.” Rick Doblin, Pahnke’s “Good Friday Experiment”: A long-term follow-up and methodological critique, Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, Vol. 23, №1, at 25.
13 In 1649 (over 100 years before the First Amendment), the Maryland assembly enacted an “Act of Toleration,” imposing whipping and imprisonment for any person who calls another a “heritick, Scismatick, Idolator, puritan, Independant, Prespiterian popish prest, Jesuite, Jesuited papist, Lutheran, Calvenist, Anabaptist, Brownist, Antinomian, Barrowist, Roundhead, Separatist, or any other name or terme in a reproachfull manner relating to matter of Religion.” The Act imposed the death penalty for any person who “shall from henceforth blaspheme God, that is Curse him, or deny our Saviour Jesus Christ to bee the sonne of God, or shall deny the holy Trinity the father sonne and holy Ghost, or the Godhead of any of the said Three persons of the Trinity or the Unity of the Godhead.” (The Maryland Toleration Act, 1649). In fact, up until 1950, fourteen states had laws making “blasphemy” a crime. (cite)
14 Ramo de Inquisicion, tomo 289, Archivo General de la Nacion, Mexico City, quoted in JONATHAN OTT, PHARMACOTHEON 84 (Natural Products Co. 1993).
15R. Gordon Wasson wrote about his participation in the sacred mushroom ceremony in an article in the May 13, 1957, issue of Life magazine (Wasson 1957).
16 Vlasis Rassia “Demolish Them,” ________ a http://ethnikoi.org/persecutions.html
17 See Jonathan Ott footnote to Ott’s use of this phrase (see his devil’s dictionary)
18 In the midst of the Last Supper Jesus stated: “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever; and the bread that I will give, is my flesh, for the life of the world. The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying: How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you.” The Gospel of John, 6:51–54.
19 See Lyttle, 1988 include a parenthetical quote on how many he documented.
