Featuring 70 speakers – including Indigenous leaders from the Americas, neuroscientists, religious thought leaders, award-winning authors, activists, poets, and many others – illuminating vital connection points between psychedelics, religion, and spirituality.

From April 21–24, Chacruna hosts this Religion and Psychedelics Forum, a four-day conference featuring some of the most exciting and diverse voices on aspects of this essential topic, from the neuroscience of visionary experiences to Indigenous traditions, interfaith dialogue, and ancient religious history. On April 21st, there will be an in-person Opening Event at the Brava Cabaret, in the Mission, in San Francisco, CA. The panels on April 22-24 will be entirely online.

Opening Remarks – Bia Labate, Ninawa Inu and Erik Davi

The Use of Sacred Plants Among Indigenous People in Brazil – Simone Takua, Francisco Apurinã, Glenn H. Shepard Jr.

At the dawn of the third decade of the 21st century, the use of plant medicines has become increasingly mainstream in Western society, to the point that many people call this moment a Psychedelic Renaissance. The Indigenous peoples of South America however, have never stopped using plants in their rituals and daily life. Even today they are great guardians of the traditional knowledge associated with plants, whether for physical or spiritual healing, to carry out shamanic journeys, to celebrate the cycles of life or to practice the cosmic diplomacy between human and non-human beings. In this special panel, the traditional uses of plants will be addressed by representatives of 3 native peoples whose territories are located in Brazil: Huni Kuin, Guarani and Apurinã, bringing a 100% Latin American Indigenous perspective to the event.

Psychedelics, Paganism and New Earth Religions - Bron Taylor, Andy Letcher, Amy Hale, Nikki Wyrd

One of the most remarkable religious revivals over the last century has been the creative return of so-called “Paganism.” This revival of magic, polytheism, and nature-based spirituality within the West manifests in many forms: Wiccan covens, occult lodges, the reconstruction of heathen European traditions, and the invention of new hybrid mysteries, many of which recenter the sacred onto the body, sexual energies, and the earth. Given the Pagan investment in altered states, plant lore, and mythopoetic experience, it’s not surprising that psychedelics have played a key role in the contemporary religious work of “re-enchanting the world.” This panel will address this legacy, exploring the role that psychedelics play in Pagan practice, and particularly focusing on the question of how the magic of plant medicines, and other magic molecules, might help inspire a vital new earth spirituality in a time of climate crisis.

Sound and Psychedelic Ritual - Will Sol, Emily Pothast

The relationship between sound and psychedelic experience is ancient, yet the precise nature of this relationship still inspires cutting edge research. Drawing on insights from psychology, sound studies, religious studies, and the discipline of sound healing, this conversation will address how both live and recorded sound may be used to create ritual in contemporary psychedelic contexts. The ways that qualities such as rhythm, repetition, and resonance can lend structure to psychedelic experiences will be considered, as well as the potential processes by which music can have a transformative effect on emotion and awareness.

The Use of Psychedelics in Brazilian Spiritualist Traditions - Marc Blainey, Marcelo S. Mercante, Luísa Saad, Glauber Loures de Assis

Brazil is one of the most incredible countries in the world when it comes to religion. It is the largest country with a Catholic majority on the planet, in addition to being the second country with the highest number of practicing Evangelicals, as well as the place with the highest concentration of Spiritists. When it comes to religion and psychedelics, the Brazilian scene is even more interesting. Brazil is the cradle of the so-called ayahuasca Religions, such as Santo Daime and Barquinha, and has a very powerful history of colonial resistance to African-based spirituality through the use of Cannabis. In this Panel, the practices of Santo Daime, Barquinha and Afro-Brazilian religions will be discussed, based on the use that these traditions make of psychoactive plants.

Psychedelics, Ancestors and Healing Justice - Marlena Robbins, Darren Springer, Jasmine Virdi, Oriana Mayorga

Do psychedelics and plant medicines represent a technology that allows us to commune with our ancestors? If so, what are the benefits of reconnecting with our ancestry? This panel will address first hand experiences and knowledge of psychedelics within traditional African and Indigenous cultures. For many BIPOC communities, connecting to their ancestors through the use of psychedelics is an integral part of culture, and can’t be dissociated from identity and territory. Sacred plants traditionally have allowed individuals and communities to connect to their ethnic roots, as well a heal systemic and intergenerational trauma. As such, there are now discussions emerging around the accessibility of these medicines on tribal reservations and in low income communities of color. Locating psychedelics in the realm of the ancestors is also related to the concept of “healing justice”: not only evocative of healing the past, but also healing the present and the future. This speaks to how we, in this present moment, as Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people, can cultivate connections to our own ancestries, heal familial bonds through psychedelics and consciously co-create the future with our youth, being better stewards for future generations.

Sacred Plant Alliance: the Mission and Vision of Self-Regulating Religious Fellowship - Brian Anderson, Allison Hoots, Rob Heffernan

Since 2019, the Sacred Plant Alliance (SPA) has grown as a self-regulating organization and professional association of religious and spiritual practitioners dedicated to the advancement of the ceremonial use of psychedelic sacraments within the United States. Its mission is to facilitate the collaboration of spiritual communities across the United States in developing and upholding best standards of practice with these sacred medicines, and in advancing legal protections under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). SPA was originally incubated by Chacruna and in many ways has grown out of Chacruna’s efforts in community organizing and education around best practices. In this panel, representatives from SPA will discuss SPA’s vision as an alliance of churches invested in mutual support, accountability, and strengthening self-regulation in the larger plant medicine community

Psychedelic Buddhism - Kati Devaney, Galia Tanay, Erik Davis

Of all the major world religions now established in the West, Western Buddhism is without doubt the one most influenced by modern psychedelic culture. Many Beats, hippies, and seekers interpreted their peak trips through Buddhist and Vendantic lenses provided by Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg, Ram Dass, and Timothy Leary. Scores of psychedelic users were drawn to Buddhist practice, and many went on to help formalize and establish Buddhism in the West. As the Western dharma grew more legitimate, the legacy of “Zig Zag Zen” went largely underground, and today many Buddhist leaders and practitioners insist that psychoactive drugs have nothing to do with dharma. But today a more contemporary psychedelic Buddhism is growing more visible. What do psychedelics offer contemporary dharma practitioners? What about the fifth precept against taking “intoxicants”? And what role will psychedelics play as Buddhism continues its rich engagement with neuroscience and the brain-based understanding of experience and altered states?

Neuropsychology of Visionary Experience - Christopher Timmermann, Hereward Tilton, Alexander Beiner, David Presti

Psychedelics present a host of fascinating and significant research topics for a wide variety of scientists who study the human mind, including neuroscientists, neuropsychologists, evolutionary psychologists, and cognitive philosophers. While aspects of psychedelic experience are quite amenable to these approaches, the profoundly visionary and seemingly mystical core of psychedelics raises more challenging issues. Given the reductionist and physicalist orientation of most science, it is not always clear how the religious, spiritual, and transpersonal approaches favored by many psychonauts will be understood as we deepen our knowledge of the brain. This panel will address some of these issues. How does the data of neuroscience shed light on extraordinary visionary states? Can “entities” be explained without explaining them away? And how might psychedelic seekers integrate rigorous brain science into their own models of expanded consciousness?

Psychedelics and a Critique of Eurochristian Religion - Anne Waldman, Roger K. Green, Jared Lacy

Anne Waldman’s life has been a nodal point for and precursor for what has become known as the psychedelic renaissance.  Her poetry, performances, activism, and Buddhism have long exhibited and embodied psychedelic aesthetics.  Her life and wisdom connects back to the intellectual movements that made psychedelics widely known to the western “counterculture.”  From her homage to Maria Sabina, Fast Speaking Woman (1974) to Trickster Feminism (2018) and Sanctuary (2019), Waldman’s poetry and activism have long engaged with psychedelics.  Along with Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Allen Ginsburg, Waldman was involved in the founding of Naropa University and the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.  She is joined in conversation with her sometimes musical collaborator and author of A Transatlantic Political Theology of Psychedelic Aesthetics (2019), Roger Green.  While reflecting on Waldman’s life and work, she and Roger will address complexities of western-derived notions of ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’ with respect to the psychedelic renaissance and in tension with Buddhism and what religious studies scholars have termed, “lived religion.”

The Psychedelic Religion of the Counter Culture - Christian Greer, Maria Mangini, Nicholas Powers, Erik Davis

As psychedelics continue to enter the mainstream, many thought leaders are justly calling for the greater recognition of the indigenous cultures that maintained these sacred medicines for millennia. But there is another tradition that kept faith with psychedelics during the more recent era of prohibition and the War on Drugs: the bohemian countercultures of the West. While these currents are often seen as hedonistic, individualistic, or at best, anarchically “spiritual,” the counterculture can also be viewed as a loose religious tradition in its own right, with its own evolving but collectively held values, social practices, and shared beliefs (including an interest in science and botany). This panel will focus on “psychedelic religion” from the Beats of the 50s through the hippies of the 60s and 70s and the Burners and neotribal travelers of today.

The Dark Night of the Soul - Yaseen Hashmi, Paul Gillis-Smith, Jeffrey Breau

This panel addresses the lack of sustained inquiry into bad trips. All too often, negative psychedelic experiences are simply construed as overtly challenging opportunities for personal growth. This insistence that traumatic “bummers” are ultimately beneficial silences contrary experiences, obscures the issues that create them, and neglects the deeper ontological complexity that animates the psychedelic space. In our discussion we will problematize the idealized image of “mysticism” that is too often simplified in contemporary psychedelic discussion by examining the dark side of mind-expansion.

Questioning the Mystical Experience Questionnaire - Tehseen Noorani, Alex Belser, Erik Davis, Sam S.B. Shonkoff

One of the most famous studies of the psychedelic renaissance remains a 2006 paper from Roland Griffith’s lab at Johns Hopkins. “Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences” confirmed Walter Pahnke’s work from the 1960s, arguing that peak psychedelic experiences were substantially “similar” to spontaneous mystical experiences. While the paper has been criticized by secular scientists for dabbling in matters of faith, scholars of religion and psychology have also raised questions about the Mystical Experience Questionnaire, the qualitative assessment form that lies at the heart of the study. Where does the MEQ come from, and what ideas about mysticism and religious experience does it assume? Who gets to say what “authentic” mystical experience is, and how did mysticism become the most important feature of psychedelic encounter? This panel will explore these questions, particularly in light of psychedelic experiences — theistic, indigenous, animist, queer — that do not feet neatly into the official mystical box.

Narratives of Healing Within a Jewish Context - Dr. Rachel Yehuda, Amichai Lau-Lavie, Dr. Melila Helner-Esched, Adriana Kertzer

This panel aims to share different perspectives on how people could access psychedelic medicine and what the ideal containers for these experiences could be. Three Jewish thought leaders talk from their own perspectives, and based on their own work with these medicines, about what healing in a Jewish context could look like. As scientists engaged with psychedelics in a clinical setting, or teachers of Jewish mystical sources that discuss altered states of mind, the panelists speak about how they are deeply engaged in creative innovations of Jewish life and healing. The conversation will be divided into 2 parts: first a discussion about intergenerational or ancestral trauma; followed by a discussion about the different types of containers where Jews are experimenting with psychedelics. We are glad to share our professional and personal experiences as scientific researchers or explorers of the mystical experience, also through entheogens.

The Emerging Field of Psychedelic Chaplaincy - Rachael Petersen, Rev. Caroline Peacock, Dr. Kamal Abu-Shamsieh, Dr. Jamie Beachy

With the emergence of psychedelic use in various clinical, research, and community settings given regulatory changes, the question of appropriate training is a pressing consideration for the field. This panel will explore the unique contributions that chaplains have as care providers for psychedelic experiences given their training and orientation as professional spiritual care providers. Emerging opportunities and contributions to the field of psychedelic chaplaincy will also be discussed and shared.

The Secret Religion with No Name: Psychedelics in Antiquity - Brian Muraresku, Erik Davis

Long before the birth of Jesus, the ancient Greeks took part in secret mystery schools that included elaborate rituals and the consumption of enigmatic substances that sparked profound visionary experiences. During the final centuries of the Roman empire, pagan theurgists continued to practice powerful rituals using mind-altering substances. Could these rituals have survived into the age of Christianity, buried by the Church in fear of their mystical power? And what could this paradigm-shifting truth mean for the current state and future of Western religion? In this panel, renowned classics scholar and author Brian C. Muraresku, author of The Immortality Key, will speak with historians Candida Moss and Wouter Hanegraaff about the secret psychedelic origins of ancient religious history. Together they will demonstrate that the history of psychedelics may reach back to the very beginnings of the West.

Unity and Difference: Abrahamic Interfaith Dialogue - Zac Kamanetz, Hunt Priest, Yousef Essex

In 1945, Aldous Huxley published The Perennial Philosophy, which argued that all the world’s religious traditions share a common metaphysical terrain. Such perennialism has profoundly influenced modern psychedelic culture, which tends to view the state of mystical unity as transcending different religious traditions. At the same time, the literature of religious experience suggests there are crucial differences between the “peak experiences” of different traditions, particularly the different between personal and impersonal views of the divine. To understand their psychedelic experiences, many Westerners have turned to Eastern religions or Indigenous traditions, finding their own Western traditions lacking. But as psychedelics go mainstream, an increasing number of Jewish, Christian and even Muslim practitioners are using psychedelics as a tool to re-invigorate and connect to the spiritual core within their own particular traditions. For this special conversation, we are bringing together leaders and practitioners of the three major Abrahamic religions - Christianity, Judaism and Islam - to discuss how psychedelics and the psychedelic experience can be understood within the contexts of each of these traditions. In so doing, we will come to understand how these sacraments can help us both to see the essential unity of all these religions as well as better appreciate the unique differences between them.

Psychedelics in Contemporary Jewish Practice: Reporting from the Ground - Madison Margolin, Aaron Genuth, Meyer Labin, Natalie Lyla Ginsberg

This panel seeks to explore how more and more people are seeing points of intersection between the use of entheogens and Jewish practice. We argue that in the context of the Jewish tradition, practitioners frequently enter into mystical or altered states of consciousness through the religion’s use of ritual and sacred sense of time, and that the use of sacred plants and compounds can fit nicely into these practices. Whether it’s using a psychedelic like LSD to deepen the transcendence of mundane time during the Sabbath, singing Jewish melodies (niggumim, akin in some ways to medicine music) during plant medicine ceremonies, incorporating mushrooms into a Rosh Hashana (Jewish new year’s) service, or taking MDMA to reach ecstatic joyous heights on the holiday of Purim, there are various ways in which entheogens are being incorporated into contemporary Jewish practice—with a nod, to the ways in which entheogens in fact were always a part of Judaism from the genesis of the tribe and religion. Indeed, Judaism began as an earth-based indigenous practice, tuned into the frequencies of the plant world, nature, and the seasons. Evidence shows that plants like acacia and cannabis were part of early Jewish life, and throughout time, mind-altering substances (including something as basic as wine) were part of the religious rituals and traditions.

Christians and the Psychedelic Renaissance - Jaime Clark-Soles, Jessica Felix Romero, Dave Barnhart, Rev. Hunt Priest

Hunt Priest, Executive Director of Ligare: A Christian Psychedelic Society, will facilitate a discussion between Jessica Felix Romero, Jaime Clark-Soles, and Dave Barnhart, Christian leaders who are professionally and personally interested in the intersection of Christianity and psychedelics. Among the topics to be discussed: the wisdom and insights of the Christian mystical and contemplative tradition, existing ritual and sacramental theology and applications for psychedelic use in clinical, hospice, and retreat settings, using psychedelics as a trusted healing modality in Christian communities, and gathering Christian community that encourages and values mystical experiences, including but not limited to those occasioned by psychedelics.

Closing Remarks - Bia Labate, Artionka Capiberibe, Joseph Mays and Chacruna Team