The First Supper: Entheogens and the Origin of Religion


Ancient Science, Books, Entheogens, Recommended

  The following is excerpted from the new book Mushrooms, Myths & Mithras: The Drug Cult that Civilized Europe by Carl Ruck, Mark Alwin Hoffman, José Alfredo González Celdrán published by City Lights. Our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness, provided madness is given us by way of divine gift. –Socrates, Phaedrus Various traditions recall the events of a “First Supper.” […]

11/12/2018

Entheogen’s & Existential Intelligence: The Use of “Plant Teachers” as Cognitive Tools


Ancient Science, Entheogens

  In light of recent specific liberalizations in drug laws in some countries, this article investigates the potential of entheogens (i.e. psychoactive plants used as spiritual sacraments) as tools to facilitate existential intelligence. “Plant teachers” from the Americas such as ayahuasca, psilocybin mushrooms, peyote, and the Indo-Aryan soma of Eurasia are examples of both past- […]

04/04/2018

8 Ways Magic Mushrooms Explain Santa Story


Alternative News, Entheogens

  By Douglas Main   The story of Santa and his flying reindeer can be traced to an unlikely source: hallucinogenic or “magic” mushrooms, according to one theory. “Santa is a modern counterpart of a shaman, who consumed mind-altering plants and fungi to commune with the spirit world,” said John Rush, an anthropologist and instructor […]

26/12/2016

Shamanism ~~ Writers, Scientists, Artists & Musicians are the Shamans of Today


Entheogens, Spiritual Perspectives

Reconnecting with Nature Effective education must have a large experiential component, I said. Given the current critical imbalance between humans and other species, nature should be a primary area of experiential education. We should balance the abstractions of our classrooms with experiences of the wholeness of living, growing wild things. Following the centuries-old practice of […]

09/11/2015

Shadow of the Shaman: 5 Reasons Being a Shaman Sucks


Entheogens

art by Charles Frizzell Gary ‘Z’ McGee, Staff Writer Waking Times “It is easy to go down into Hell; night and day, the gates of dark Death stand wide; but to climb back again, to retrace one’s steps to the upper air — there’s the rub, the task.” –Virgil Ghost talker? Vision poet? Soothsayer? Oracle? Bridge between […]

20/02/2015

The Shaman’s Last Apprentice


Entheogens, Recommended, Videos

Enheo     art by Android Jones     ‘The Shaman’s Last Apprentice’ is a narrative documentary focusing on the story of Rebekah Shaman, who in 1997 followed a vision she received from a Shaman calling her to the Amazon, where she found and studied intensively with a powerful Ayahuasquero Shaman in a little village […]

05/11/2014

Interspecies Communication via Psychedelics?


Ancient Science, Books, Entheogens, Recommended

The following is an excerpt from Paul Devereux’s The Long Trip: A Prehistory of Psychedelia (available from Amazon US and Amazon UK), reprinted with permission. The Long Trip is… …probably the most comprehensive single volume to look at the use of mind-altering drugs, or entheogens, for ritual and shamanistic purposes throughout humanity’s long story, while […]

05/09/2013