Schedule

• 9am Welcome

• 9:10-10:10 Safety, Access, Ethics, and Equity

  Laura Appleman - The Church of Eugenics? Envisioning Psychedelic Dystopias
  Jeffrey Breau - Care and Creed: Learning from Novel Psychedelic Spiritual Communities
  Ayize Jama-Everett - Pharmacological Reductionism, Unequal Justice, and Anti-Blackness in the Pursuit of Religious Freedom Under RFRA
  oriana mayorga - An Orated Ethnography

• 10:20-11:40 Legal Doctrines and Religious Realities

  Martin Lederman, Victoria Litman, Mason Marks, Josh McDaniel, Charles Stang

• 11:50-1:00 RFRA, the DEA, and Religious Exemptions

  Ismail Ali - Cultural Blind Spots and Growth Edges of US Protections for Entheogenic Religions
  Allison Hoots - Religious-Based Exemptions Under RFRA and the Controlled Substances Act
  John Rapp - RFRA Challenges That Have Succeeded… and Failed
  Matt Zorn - So, You’re Looking to Litigate. Strategic Considerations in Filing a Lawsuit.

• 1:10pm Closing Remarks

  Noah Feldman
  Jay Michaelson

• 1:30 Symposium Ends
  Lunch for Afternoon Session Participants

• 2:30-4:00 Afternoon Session 1 (invited participants)

  Langdell Hall

• 4:15-5:45 Afternoon Session 2 (invited participants)

  Langdell Hall

Abstracts

Jeffrey Breau, Care and Creed: Learning from Novel Psychedelic Spiritual Communities

Novel psychedelic spiritual communities (NPSCs) are new religious movements forming around psychedelic use that are distinct from Indigenous plant medicine traditions and unaffiliated with major world religions. They represent religions that are unique to the psychedelic space. NPSCs challenge conventional understandings of religious life, have sophisticated approaches to community care, and will face distinct hurdles to obtain religious freedom. This presentation will share preliminary findings from a multisite ethnography of NPSCs in the United States. Religion, the law, and care are inextricably entwined for NSPCs, and this presentation will argue that to learn from NPSCs we must attend to how these three domains shape their communities. The talk will focus on how NPSCs are creating safe psychedelic rituals, navigating the regulatory environment, and approaching ethical oversight. It will conclude by discussing what NPSCs suggest for established religious communities interested in entheogenic practices.

Rev. Jamie Clark-Soles, Searching the Depths of God: NOSC in Christian Scripture  

If the U.S. Constitution is the founding communal document for America, then Sacred Scripture is/are the founding communal document/s of Christianity. From Genesis to Revelation we find ample evidence of NOSC and even the attempt to induce them. How might this inform (or not) our current consideration of legalizing psychedelics for the purposes of spiritual formation within Christianity?

Ron Cole-Turner, Psychedelics and the Christian Mystical Path

The mystical in Christianity finds its center in lifelong spiritual transformation in relationship to the presence of divine love. The process of transformation might be punctuated by intense or non-ordinary experiences, but the experiences are not its defining feature. In the tradition of James or Stace, however, modern definitions of mysticism (and the Mystical Experience Questionnaire, widely used by researchers) focus almost exclusively on mystical experiences, and even then do not discuss love. My central questions are: When intense psychedelic spiritual experiences occur, can they lead to the rich spiritual transformation that Christianity values? Can church leaders and congregations support those who want to explore psychedelic experiences within a Christian context? Moreover, in terms of legal recognition, the use of psychedelics are not a traditional sacrament, but the use of groups for spiritual reflection and growth is a longstanding practice. If we imagine groups tailored to include reflection on psychedelic experiences, over time, such groups might come to consider psychedelics as central to spiritual growth. Would they be free to act on this belief?

Rabbi Jill Hammer, The Drum and the Vineyard: Priestesses Changing Consciousness in Ancient Israel 

Biblical texts reveal that women in ancient Israel used the drum, dance and song to create sacred experience and change consciousness.  Archaeology bears out that women with drums, acting as sacred musicians, were important figures in biblical culture, and were sometimes named as temple workers or prophetesses.  While they used these tools in a variety of contexts, we can particularly note that women were the celebrants of biblical vineyard dedication rituals and annual vineyard celebrations. It is possible to conclude that wine was also involved in these celebrations—a further tool for trance.  Set in the wider context of women’s sacred ritual in ancient Israel, these musical, earthy rituals seem to suggest that music and wine were openings to deep ritual experience and even to prophecy.

Ayize Jama-Everett, Pharmacological Reductionism, Unequal Justice, and Anti-Blackness in the Pursuit of Religious Freedom Under RFRA

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) was intended to protect sacred practices from government interference, yet its application reveals a stark racial bias. While Indigenous traditions involving peyote and ayahuasca have secured legal recognition-- and even some largely-white entheogenic churches' uses of them – African and African diasporic spiritual traditions—such as Hoodoo’s use of High John the Conqueror and Bwiti’s Iboga—remain marginalized. This talk explores how pharmacological reductionism limits the sacred to a material plane and constructs a view of the Sacred that is exclusory to traditions and religious effects that are collaborative in nature.. This exclusion reflects a deeper legacy of anti-Blackness, wherein Black religious innovation is dismissed, criminalized, or erased. Addressing these disparities requires an expanded legal and cultural framework that honors the full spectrum of sacred traditions.

Elly Moseson, Mysticism, Magic and the Search for Psychedelic Analogues in the Jewish Tradition

While the cultivation of altered states of consciousness (ASCs) for religious purposes in the Jewish tradition is typically treated in connection with the Jewish mystical tradition, this paper proposes that reframing ASCs in terms of magic offers a compelling framework for considering the place of psychedelics in contemporary Judaism. Despite the significant overlap between the two traditions, magic tends to focus on individual agency, prioritizing efficacy and pragmatic outcomes, whereas mysticism often emphasizes specific doctrines, pietistic ideals, and communal or initiatory structures. The relative absence of pietistic rhetoric and strictures in magical literature, along with its emphasis on efficacy, parallels both the availability of psychedelic substances without moral preconditions and their consistent effectiveness in inducing ASCs. Another parallel can be found in the ambivalence with which normative religion and culture regard both magic and psychedelics. Drawing on examples from the Jewish magical tradition, this paper suggests that reconsidering ASCs in terms of magic, rather than mysticism, provides a fresh perspective on both the integration of psychedelics into contemporary Jewish practice and its potential challenges

Sharday Mosurinjohn, The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences

This talk responds to the idea that the ancient Eleusynian Mysteries were psychedelic, as claimed by Carl Ruck and co-authors in The Road to Eleusis (1978), revitalized by Brian Muraresku’s The Immortality Key (2020), and popularized by the Overton window-widening Joe Rogan. It begins by exposing critical methodological flaws in the arguments, namely, a pattern of presenting claims, followed by mild circumstantial evidence, and then rhetorically solidifying the interpretation of this evidence into a “fact,” on which is built each subsequent round of conjecture. In The Road To Eleusis, a speculation like “It seems obvious that an hallucinogen must have induced it” (2008: 47) immediately furnishes the next premise “To identify the Eleusynian drug…” (2008: 47) that begins the following paragraph. I argue that these writers’ dogged pursuit of evidentiary mirages has to do with wanting a western civilizational pedigree to dignify the use of stigmatized drugs. This myopia is rooted in colonial violence that precludes seriously relating to the many well-documented Indigenous histories of psychedelics, as well as a sort of functional fixedness that prevents seeing contemporary psychedelic practice in continuity with other, and maybe even older, non-pharmacological methods of changing consciousness. I conclude that, given how the psychedelic hypothesis is fundamentally flawed in its study of antiquity, it is a shaky foundation on which to build an argument for modern psychedelic use for therapeutic and spiritual practice. I also report on the multi-year history of the rejection of the manuscript on which this talk is based as it is emblematic of the way popular audiences and scholars fail to communicate around psychedelic history and culture, even as psychedelic bioscience scholarship is at the centre of today’s social mainstreaming.

Rev. Hunt Priest, Claiming a Ministry: Resourcing Christians for Psychedelic Spiritual and Pastoral Care

With high-quality educational resources and training, Christian congregations could, through existing programs and ministries, support parishioners and the wider community in their psychedelic experiences by providing a safe and non-judgmental space for open discussions and peer support. Clergy and layleaders could offer spiritual guidance and integration support, helping individuals make sense of their psychedelic journeys within a Christian context. Additionally, churches could explore how the psycho-spiritual insights gained in a psychedelic experience might be integrated into existing Christian practices and beliefs, fostering a more inclusive and expansive approach to spirituality, religion, and mental health.

Yosef Rosen, Ba'alei Shem as Predecessors for Contemporary Jewish Psychedelic Guidance

Not too long ago, Jewish shamans roamed through Ashkenaz, offering healing and mystical ecstasy. These practitioners were called Ba’alei Shem, masters of the name, because kabbalistic names of God and angels were a core part of their medical craft—written in amulets or chanted over herbs. Trained in Kabbalah, bloodletting, herbalism, other pre-modern healing modalities, and magical incantations, they offered a uniquely Jewish style of healing throughout the early-modern period. This talk will propose that these figures—with their integration of ecstasy, healing, meditation, and ascent—provide the best historical template for contemporary Jewish psychedelic facilitation. As more Jews search for psychedelic settings that offer healing modalities rooted in Jewish lineage, “Ba’al Shemkeit” offers a model of training and practice for emergent Jewish facilitators. Unlike more traditional (theoretical) Kabbalistic models, Ba’al Shemkeit emerges from Practical Kabbalah and is thus better suited to contemporary models of psychedelic facilitation that integrate the earthy, somatic, and curative aspects of existence.