These little blogs are crumbs that have fallen from my table. They will help you find your way through the psychedelic forest.

You can follow if you want, it’s up to you. But unlike Orpheus, I’m not looking back.

The Way of the Holy Mushroom combines outer alchemy (“waidan”) with inner alchemy (“neidan”). The psychoactive psilocybin brew is the “external elixir” which, in conjunction with special meditation techniques (mantras, breathwork, metanoia, etc.) produces the mysterious “golden elixir” that heals and rejuvenates body and mind.

The alchemy is effected through the skillful use of religious formulations (“holy magic”) and the interplay of consciousness and energy (“Shiva” and “Shakti”). The enormous amplification in the natural levels of bio-electricity in the body (“Qi” in Chinese) triggered by psychoactive compounds such as psilocybin can then be harnessed in the service of physical, emotional and mental well-being.

Recent scientific research on bio-electricity has shown it to have both restorative and regenerative properties. However, science has yet to catch up with the ancient arts of inner alchemy, and has no clear understanding of the relationship between consciousness and energy.

Hermetic discipline (quarantine from worldly distraction and rumination) for example, has long been advocated by spiritual masters as essential for the cultivation of Qi, as it is the only way to free up consciousness from the monopoly of the mind. Sustained attention or mindfulness is also essential. As an old Chinese adage has it, “you cannot cook golden rice in a leaky pot”.

“There is but one salvation for all mankind, and that is the life of God in the soul. God has but one design or intent towards all mankind, and that is to introduce or generate his own life, light, and spirit in them, that all may be as many images, temples, and habitations of the Holy Trinity. This is God’s will to all Christians, Jews and heathens. They are all equally the desire of his heart, his light continually waits for an entrance into all of them, his wisdom crieth, she putteth forth her voice, not here, or there, but everywhere, in all the streets of all the parts of the world.

Now there is but one possible way for man to attain this salvation, or life of God in the soul. There is not one for the Jew, another for a Christian, and a third for the heathen. No; God is one, human nature is one, salvation is one, and the way to it is one; and that is, the desire of the soul turned to God. When this desire is alive and breaks forth in any creature under heaven, then the lost sheep is found, and the shepherd has it upon his shoulders. Through this desire the poor prodigal son leaves his husks and swine, and hastes to his father: it is because of this desire, that the father sees the son, while yet afar off, that he runs out to meet him, falls on his neck, and kisses him. See how plainly we are taught, that no sooner is this desire arisen, and in motion towards God, but the operation of God’s Spirit answers to it, cherishes and welcomes its first beginnings, signified by the father’s seeing, and having compassion on his son, whilst yet afar off, that is, in the first beginnings of his desire. Thus does this desire do all, it brings the soul to God, and God into the soul, it unites with God, it co-operates with God, and is one life with God. Suppose this desire not to be alive, not in motion either in a Jew, or a Christian, and then all the sacrifices, the service, the worship either of the law, or the gospel, are but dead works, that bring no life into the soul, nor beget any union between God and it. Suppose this desire to be awakened, and fixed upon God, though in souls that never heard either of the law or gospel, and then the divine life, or operation of God, enters into them, and the new birth in Christ is formed in those who never heard of his name. And these are they ‘that shall come from the east, and from the west, and sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, in the kingdom of God.'”

William Law (from The Spirit of Prayer)

The spirit of the Holy Mushroom only reveals itself in its full power and glory when approached with due reverence and humility and with the true spirit of worship.

This is only possible with religious training, that is, with the acquired capacity for heartfelt worship and prayer.

Take inspiration from the monastics, the world experts in devotional prayer. It’s never too late or too early to learn bhakti yoga. The Mushroom is patient. The Mushroom will wait.

O worship the King

All glorious above;

O gratefully sing

His power and his love:

Our Shield and Defender,

The Ancient of days,

Pavilioned in splendour,

And girded with praise.

O tell of his might,

O sing of his grace,

Whose robe is the light,

Whose canopy space.

His chariots of wrath

The deep thunder-clouds form,

And dark is his path

On the wings of the storm.

Paul Tillich and Rudolf Otto get to the bottom of what it means to tread the Way of the Holy Mushroom in their classic works, The Courage to Be and The Idea of the Holy. When you understand the radical, existential nature of courage and faith and the radical, supernatural nature of the numinous and the holy, you understand how the ritual, sacramental use of psychedelics makes for a strong, faithful and holy people.

The courage to be Holy is the courage to despair of Babylon and to put all your trust in the power of Being-itself. Beyond the wisdom of the world and the morality of the world, beyond psychedelia and mysticism, beyond duality and non-duality, there is the immutable and infinite holiness of God, the source of all holiness.

But Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? They say unto him, We are able.

Matthew 20:22

The Holy Grail is a mythical cup which confers eternal youth to whoever drinks from it. The knights of the round table of Arthurian legend are sent out on a quest to find it, as it is the only thing that can heal the stricken king.

What is the Holy Grail?

It is a cup filled with the blood of Christ, which is the spirit of God (some might say, filled with an entheogenic elixir). In Kabbalah, this “saving cup” is the Kli, the spiritual vessel for the divine light. In Christianity, it is the body of Christ, the Word made flesh, containing the spirit of Christ, the eternal Logos.

If we can’t stand the power of this spirit in the psychedelic experience, if we cannot “bear the beams of love”, we will either close down, batten down the hatches and block the influx of psychic energy, or we will shatter into pieces: Shevirat haKeilim. And without a solid container, the life-giving spirit will be lost, as if we were to pour water into a cracked vase.

The “set and setting” provide a container for the psychedelic spirit. The mantra and the music in particular act as vessels for the divine energies so that we can hold them and hold onto them, and channel them through our mortal frames without blocking or shattering. But so does our ability to endure, to stand firm and withstand “the slings and arrows” of the spirit world.

Taking our cue from Nassim Taleb’s work, the vessel which receives the devastating power of the psychedelic numen must be “anti-fragile”. Unlike a fragile wine glass that smashes as soon as it hits the hard floor, or a non-fragile plastic beaker that bounces back, it must be anti-fragile. Like our bones and muscles, which get stronger when put under stress, the soul of the shaman increases in resilience and power with each psychedelic onslaught.

The mystical elixir inside the cup fortifies and strengthens the cup itself. Although the ego may shatter, although the mind may shatter (the “shattering of the vessels”), the soul, which is the true cup, manifests ever more strongly. The golden chalice is not given to us, but must be found, must be alchemically created, out of the very golden elixir it holds.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but only if you have a good-enough container to start with. Strong psychedelic medicine is contra-indicated for emotionally unstable people with serious mental health problems, people with severe anxiety or depression, and people with a history of psychotic breakdown. (Psychedelic treatments can be enormously healing and beneficial for all sorts of conditions, but only within a supportive and carefully administered therapeutic context, with continuous professional care and attention during the experience, and lengthy preparation and integration before and after).

Although the excitable advocates for the psychedelic renaissance like to portray psychedelics as a miraculous panacea for all our problems, there is no magic pill, there is no short cut, and there is no free lunch. It’s bloody hard work. And it’s not for everyone.

Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? They say unto him, We are able.

Matthew 20:22

In his 1960 book The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis explores the different manifestations of four distinct forms of love: storge (affection), philia (friendship), eros (sexual/romantic love) and agape (charity). He makes the point that any one of the first three forms of love become corrupted and distorted if divorced from the fourth form, agape, which he calls “the love of God”. It seems that without this mysterious love of God, we can’t help making idols of one or several of the other loves, and that never ends well:

“The claim to divinity which our loves so easily make can be refuted […] The loves prove that they are unworthy to take the place of God by the fact that the cannot even remain themselves and do what they promise to do without God’s help.”

This is readily seen if we relate the first three loves to the different worlds of the Wheel of Babylon (see the Meditation page). Storge is associated with Muggle World, being the love of comfort and domesticity, family and familiarity. Filia is associated with Muppet World, in the sense that it creates a separate clique or elitist bubble which can foster collective delusions in relation to the rest of society. Eros is associated with Diva World, in the way in which it builds exquisite pleasure palaces for its blessed lovers.

To reiterate, C.S. Lewis is not saying that there is anything inherently wrong with storge, philia or eros. In fact, human beings cannot live happy and fulfilled lives without them. His point is, rather, that they can become distorted and inflated to the exclusion of the transcendent Source of Love and of each other. As soon as they “take the place of God”, they begin to sour and go bad.

When storge goes bad, the cosy, comfortable and familiar Muggle World degenerates to the point where it becomes indistinguishable from Addict World. Those loved things that habitually bring comfort, whether substances like coffee or alcohol, behaviours like shopping, socialising or watching television, change from Muggle needs to Addict needs. We find ourselves caught in an ever-tightening spiral of urgency and desperation.

When philia sours, the special bonds of friendship, cameraderie and solidarity turn into bonds of slavery, enmity and paranoia. Muppets in arms become Victims both of the (real or perceived) persecution of outsiders, and of each other. A cult mentality develops, where all sorts of abuses can flourish in an atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion. Think of Stalin’s inner circle, or Osho’s.

Finally, when eros goes rotten, the delirious passions of sexual and romantic feelings quickly flip over into intense rage, jealousy and hatred. Divas in their Diva Heaven become Demons in Hell, ever discovering new and ingenious ways to torture each other.

Without agape, that endlessly self-giving fount of charity and eternal source of Light and Love, storge, philia and eros inevitably flounder on the rocks of selfishness and narcissism, making Addicts out of Muggles, Victims out of Muppets and Demons out of Divas, endlessly turning the Wheel of Babylon, until we finally find the courage to step off into the infinite ocean that is the love of God.

But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.

1 John 2:27

What does this mean? Why is anointing so important? Dr James Cooke gives us the run down:

“In Exodus, God gives Moses the recipe for holy anointing oil.  It is made with myrrh, cinnamon, and a plant called kaneh-bosm.  “Kaneh” means “reed” or “hemp”, while “bosm” means “aromatic” or “fragrant”.  Does a particularly famous kind of “fragrant hemp” come to mind? The name kaneh-bosm was sometimes fused in traditional Hebrew, into kannabos or kannabus.  This is rather close to the “kannabis” of ancient Greek, from which we get “cannabis”.  In “Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible”, author Chris Bennett makes the case for kaneh-bosm being cannabis.  Many scholars, however, argue that kaneh-bosm is a plant called calamus.  This recipe called for a large amount of kaneh-bosm which, if cannabis, would have been highly psychoactive when applied liberally on the skin.

“Christ” means the anointed one, and Jesus, along with his disciples, performed healing miracles using anointing oil.  Mark 6:13 states that “They cast out many devils, and anointed with oil many that were sick and healed them”.  If the holy anointing oil of the Hebrew Bible did indeed contain cannabis, perhaps Jesus’ healing miracles were performed with chemicals such as THC and CBD.  In 2013, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta presented a documentary called “Weed” which included the story of a girl named Charlotte Figi.  Charlotte suffered from hundreds of debilitating seizures a week as a result of a disease called Dravet syndrome.  The seizures didn’t respond to medication, but she showed a dramatic improvement after taking CBD oil.  Epilepsy has been attributed to possession by demons across cultures throughout time.  Perhaps the casting out of devils described by Mark was the effect of CBD-infused holy oil helping people suffering from epilepsy.

If the anointing oil is so central to Christianity, why isn’t it widely discussed?  In the first several centuries following the life of Jesus, many different Christian sects existed.  In 367 AD Saint Athanasius, then the Bishop of Alexandria, decided which texts were to be considered canonical and which were to be excluded.  The apocryphal texts, meaning that they belonged to esoteric cults that required initiations into their secret rites, were deemed heretical and were omitted.  During the following period of persecution, the followers of these sects hid some of their texts, including those found in 1945 in the Nag Hammadi Library in Egypt.

These texts included the Gospel of Philip, which provides a take on Christianity in which an active anointing oil is central.  Philip writes of the superiority of the anointing ritual over the baptism ritual, “There is water in water, there is fire in chrism”. Chrism was a term for the holy anointing oil and shows the link to the name “Christ”.  Philip reported the effects to be highly entheogenic, writing that if “One receives this unction … this person is no longer a Christian but a Christ”.  Such a democratic version of Christianity, in which all participants connect with the divine within themselves, may have been seen as a significant threat to the hierarchical modes of the young religion, in which the Bishops sought to retain their power.”

I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire

Matthew 3:11

Imagine that you are on your deathbed and the moment has come where there is nothing for it but to die. You give up the ghost. You let go. You surrender. You let yourself be taken.

Do this on “magic mushrooms” (I prefer “holy mushrooms”) now, while you are still very much alive, and you will be transported to Heaven. What happens next will depend on the state of your soul. If it’s not in good order, you will suffer. If you’re in a particularly bad way, you will feel as though you’ve been plunged into the depths of Hell.

Hell is actually in Heaven. It is really just an intense form of Purgatory. Suffer it patiently if you don’t want to make things worse for yourself. Learn the lessons you are given and accept the healing, however painful. Eventually, with repeated practice, and through many trials and tribulations, you will find that you have purified your sight sufficiently to see the Holy of Holies, the Eternal Light. But you will also find that you still cannot be admitted into the presence of God.

Only the Son of God is admitted. If you want to come before God the Father therefore, you must “put on Christ”. You must train yourself to be Christ-like on earth, through the imitation of Christ, and to be Christ-like in heaven, through mystical communion. “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (John 14:6)

Like Jacob tricking his blind father Isaac by dressing up in the animal skins of Esau, you must trick God the Father by dressing up in the mind, body and spirit of Christ. Then He will give you your blessing.

Rudolf Otto describes precisely this need for clothing, veiling, covering or shielding oneself in order to approach God (the “numen”) in his masterpiece The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the non-rational factor in the idea of the divine and its relation to the rational :

“We meet the ‘moment’ of ‘covering’ in specially clear form in the religion of Yahweh, in its rites and the emotion they excite; but it is contained also, though more obscurely, in many other religions. It comprises, first, a manifestation of the numinous awe, viz. the feeling that the ‘profane’ creature cannot forthwith approach the numen, but has need of a covering or shield against the όργή [wrath] of the numen. Such a ‘covering’ is then a ‘consecration’, i.e. a procedure that renders the approacher himself ‘numinous’, frees him from his ‘profane’ being, and fits him for intercourse with the numen. The means of ‘consecration’, however – ‘means of grace’ in the proper sense – are derived from, or conferred and appointed by, the numen itself, which bestows something of its own quality to make man capable of communion with it.”

As the Gospel of Philip has it, “No one may visit the King without robes of light.“

You could say that Christianity provides us with the kind of “cheat” familiar to gamers. Even though you are ‘not worthy’, even though you are ‘profane’, even though you are a ‘sinner’, you can still have an audience with God. How? Through the ‘saving grace’ of Christ, by imaginatively identifying with him and borrowing his numinosity. This is why he is said to “take away the sins of the world”.

In reality, however, he only ‘covers’ our sin, in order that we may approach the Infinite Source of Life, and in so doing be cleansed, purified, healed, redeemed, remade and born again in the image of God, and made a child of God, and be given the keys to immortality.

So what does this communion with the numen yield? What is the blessing conferred by the Eternal Light, the enigmatic and unapproachable Ein Sof Aur? Seemingly, this mysterious thing called “eternal life”:

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life;

(For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;)

That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.

And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.

This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

1 John 1: 1-5

Beyond the confusions, contradictions and paradoxes of discriminative thought, there is a special place reserved for the faithful, called The Peace that Passes All Understanding.