Consciousness Cafe - Entheogens and Psychedelic Cultural Transmissions

This is the best overview I have read of the various North American psychedelic and entheogenic churches that have arisen in the 20th century. I highly recommend you take the time to at least skim this paper.

Here are several broad strokes about Stuart's paper. These are all strictly my point of view.

Observations about the Law

It is impossible to get, from this paper, any kind of concrete idea of where U.S. law is headed with respect to entheogenic religions. This paper covers churches from the turn of the 20th century onward. Only a few of the legal issues detailed are more recent than 1994. In the past century we have seen a vast change in the social character of the United States. The law tends to reflect the views of the prevailing society. This overview covers too broad a span of time to get an idea of which way we are headed; whether in the direction of more freedom, or more control.

There are several legal defeats and imprisonments and impoundments documented here. It is easy to see the cause of the psychedelic church as hopeless. But again, we are told nothing about whether the church hired a competent attorney to defend herself, and whether the defendants behaved themselves in court. It is obvious from the many colorful stories recounted in "Entheogenic Sects" that many psychedelic church leaders and their followers were eccentric, wild, amazing people. This is not necessarily how you should act in court if you want a good outcome. It is obvious that some psychedelic leaders of the past could not keep their buffoonish behavior out of the courts, and the public eye. It is therefore clear from this overview that in many cases an effective defense was not mounted, and could not be, given the kind of people leading the church.

Further, many of the stories of persecution occurred in what we Americans now call "red states." Many entheo churches were located in rural and conservative states, with predictably conservative and unsavvy judges and juries. A good piece of advice for psychedelic churches for the near future in the U.S.: try to operate primarily in liberal, metropolitan states with judges savvy about cultural and religious diversity. Establish a basehead in cosmopolitan, liberal America before venturing out into the savage Christian heartland.

Another point against some psychedelic churches of the past is that they, rather openly, incorporated as a dodge to avoid imprisonment for use of what are otherwise prohibited materials. The U.S. courts want to see, in a religion, that the followers are practicing a legitimate faith. If they are not sincere practitioners, this will be obvious to any savvy judge or jury. Your church, if you have one, must be based upon sincere faith and religious practice.

Some of the groups operating openly with an entheogenic sacrament were also clearly poor in cash. It seems wise for any group operating openly to have a war chest to pay competent attorneys to defend you if you are busted. Perhaps it would be best for these churches to operate secretly until they are able to hire an attorney.

Finally, among the legal challenges we face, is that setting a precedent in the U.S. will do very little to advance psychedelic religious rights in other countries. The First Amendment free exercise clause applies only within the United States. And not only are precedents of limited geographic scope; they also can be reversed as new judges ascend, and as the society's prevailing attitudes change. Legal decisions are limited in scope over both space and time.

The only truly irreversible thing that entheo activists can do is to educate the society as a whole. Judges, juries and lawyers emerge from a mainstream context. Changing the mainstream attitudes about prohibited psychoactives and entheogenic sacraments can make lasting changes in the legal decisions which emerge from the courts.


None of this should be read as saying the case for the psychedelic church is hopeless. It is certain that if we do not fight for our rights, we will not secure them. Unless you practice your freedoms, you will lose them. Just be aware that unless you want to spend the rest of your life in the courts, open practice of our religion might not be an option for most of us. At least not this early in the 21st century.

Religious Aspects

Mr Stuart makes the point that the courts are not currently inclined to support multiple eucharist psychedelic churches. This is an important point. The U.S. courts tend to say that, if you support, say, both psilocybin mushrooms and the use of Salvia Divinorum, then neither of this is an essential sacrament. Neither sacrament will then be supported by the courts as a legal sacrament. The U.S. courts say we must choose one sacrament and stick with it, despite the overwhelming evidence within our community that an entheogen, such as the mushroom, that is found healing and transformative by one shamanic practitioner, is found to be poison and anathema to a second practitioner. Mr. Stuart makes the additional point that this flies contrary to South American native practices, where very few curanderos work with only one psychoactive plant. Very few healers even in the United States work with only one kind of medicine. Why then would an entheogenic spiritual healer run a church with only one sacrament?

So already those who intend to operate a psychedelic church, openly and with multiple sacraments, face a serious obstacle. This will be a new fight completely unlike those already engaged by the Native American Church peyoteists and the UDV ayahuasceros. Not an unwinnable fight but also not a clear or easy win. Is it even wise to fight such a battle at this time?


It should also be obvious to the reader that psychedelic churches can be as dogmatic, excessively structured, and full of mindless followers and manipulative cult leaders as any cult. There is nothing about entheogens that makes a church that works with them free of power plays and ossification. There has to be a vision for a psychedelic church other than the use of psychedelics. The vision should emerge out of a shared community purpose, not from the head of a single charismatic leader.

Stuart notes that psychedelic churches suffer from the same utopian tendency to disintegrate upon the loss of a few material assets, or a couple of core leaders. A successful entheo sect should have a business plan (a way of staying materially viable), a plan for leadership succession (and a way of ousting ineffective leadership), and a long term shared mission statement that is known and endorsed by all church membership.


Since few groups of psychedelic practitioners are going to want to put most of their time and money into legal battles, we may do best by working discretely and in secrecy as so many have for years under different forms of persecution. It is clear that some form of shamanism continued in secrecy in Europe for centuries as Christianity rose as a political power and religious orthodoxy. Against the power of the Christian monolith, it is possible that secret societies such as the Rosicrucians, Freemasons, Gnostics, and ceremonial magicians operated for centuries in secret networks. The Sufis have operated discretely and often secretly in many Islamic and Christian countries where their open presence would not be welcome, and Jews throughout the world have often had to hide, or at least discretely practice, their religion.

The secret society may be the best model for psychedelic religion in the 21st century. We should continue to fight select battles as resources become available. At the same time, we should continue to develop, and share, our group experience in the use of psychedelics. We should discretely and slowly introduce this knowledge into mainstream society. As psychedelic insight becomes conventional wisdom, it will become easier to win more expansive victories in the court system. None of this will happen quickly.

Continuing to expand psychedelic spiritual organizations as loose networks may minimize the risk of personality cults and unflexible dogmatic central churches developing. Psychedelic networks have existed for years. Loose networks made up of many small cells makes it possible for successful patterns of practice to perpetuate across the network, while allowing people to escape cells which have become stagnant or which have developed internal pathologies. The network is a more adaptive organism than the centrally organized hierarchy which churches most often resemble.

-- Ustaath