The Psychedelic ChristianWritings
Testimony, theology, and reflection — written slowly and posted as they are ready.
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What’s in a Name?: On Names for Psychedelics
Language does more than label; it interprets reality. Hallucinogen, psychedelic, entheogen, sacred medicine — the names we choose for these substances shape how we engage them: as pathology, as self-discovery, or as sacrament. On naming as a theological practice, from Adam in the garden to the language of the liturgy.
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Christians and Early Modern Psychedelic Use
The modern rediscovery of psychedelics was not merely secular. Albert Hofmann was a Christian; Maria Sabina prayed to Christ over the first Western mushroom ceremony; and Walter Pahnke’s Good Friday Experiment showed that, in a religious setting, these substances can occasion genuinely religious experiences with lasting fruit.
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The depths of a hell believed eternal; a cry to Jesus in the chaos of an emergency room; and the long road of recovery, held up by three pillars — Jesus, the Scriptures, and the Church. The conclusion of the testimony, and the lesson underneath it all: mercy, grace, forgiveness, and love.
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Why darkness and the psychedelic experience have always belonged together; a paranoia of hidden meanings that grew to cosmic proportions; and an ambulance door that opened like a Doré vision of paradise.
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Neil meets the police; an honest word about what in this story is not worth imitating; and a case for making room in our assessments of psychedelics for the hard trip — from Job, to Isaiah, to Gethsemane.
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The LSD begins to take effect on the airstrip; a friend disappears into the dark woods; and waiting at the bottom of the hill are two fundamentalist Baptist parents and a question — ‘Where’s Neil?’ On the difficulty of describing profound experience, and set and setting learned the hard way.
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There are moments in our lives that rock us deeply; moments that hang on in our consciousness, relentlessly requiring a reckoning. I imagine that most everyone reading this, regardless of age, has at least one such experience…