This is a draft of a piece I am working on... thought I'd share it here.
The Psychedelic Renaissance. Ever heard that term? It’s being thrown around at great deal and people claim we are in this period right now. I want to talk about it, because that is incorrect. But before I do I want to give a short history lesson.
Let’s go back in time, about 5000 years, to a period called the Ancient History. This period lasted up until the year 400, around the time of the fall of the Roman Empire.
It was at this time a new age began called the Middle Ages, and it lasted for almost a thousand years ending in 1499. It was during this period that alchemy and hermeticism had its heyday although they began much earlier.
Anyway, one of the major aspects of the Middle Ages was that people did not read or write, and they had to rely on the Church and the Clergy to inform them how to get their ticket into heaven. In short people had to trust an authority for the truth. They could not find out for themselves as they could not read, and even if they could how could they even afford to buy books?
The period known as the Reformation would change this and eventually lead mankind into the Renaissance, which was a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries.
The Renaissance that followed the Middle Ages was actually a revival of an older time, the Classical Antiquity or Ancient History. This is a common occurrence, that we humans long for a greater period that already existed and we try and re-create it.
The Renaissance was the artistic and intellectual rebirth of Europe. Before the Renaissance we weren’t very smart (not that we are now) and we did nothing but what we were told. During and after the Renaissance people had a feeling that life is valuable and rich, that life is not all about getting to heaven… that it is important to think for yourself.
The Renaissance created both the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution, about 300 years ago or in other terms during the 17th and 18th century. The Enlightenment was a period which saw the growth of intellectual reason, individualism and a challenge to existing religious and political structures.
The Scientific Revolution was an element of The Enlightenment period. The Scientific Revolution focused on the development of modern science based on the scientific method of deductive reasonsing.
All this eventually led to the industrial revolution. And bob’s your uncle here we are.
-------------------------------------------
Now let’s look at psychedelics and map it onto these ages… the periods of history I’ve spoken about stretches over thousands of years but as they say in alchemy: as above, so below… the microcosm, and the macrocosm. We are going to place 20th century psychedelic history on top of these periods of history.
I am not including the psychedelic use of indigenous people in this as the perspective here is the so-called civilized part of the world, whatever civil means. Indigenous peoples have had a relationship with psychedelic plants since the dawn of time as far as I can tell and that is another story altogether. This is about “modern mans” relationship with psychedelics.
We begin when psychedelics was re-discovered in the early half of the 20th century. During this time psychedelics were legal and many of the psychedelic legends we still speak about today had their first earth shattering trips.
Like for instance when Albert Hofman had his famous first LSD trip on the 19th of April 1943. Or when the hallucinogenic properties of DMT were uncovered in 1956 by Hungarian chemist and psychiatrist Stephen Szara. Or when R. Gordon Wasson and his wife Valentina studied the ritual use of psychoactive mushrooms in Mexico, which made its use enter common knowledge. I would call this period our psychedelic Ancient History.
In Anceint History there was the Eleusinian Mysteries were initiations held every year for the cult of Demeter and Persephone based at the Panhellenic Sanctuary of Eleusis in ancient Greece. Numerous scholars have proposed that the power of the Eleusinian Mysteries came from the kykeon's functioning as an entheogen, or psychedelic agent. People travelled far and wide to take part in the rituals at Eleusis.
In modern times we had the Summer of love and the hippie revolution. This period is also part of our Ancient History of Psychedelics. But what came after that?
What followed Ancient History was the Middle Ages… or as it used to be called the Dark Ages. Similar to the period of history called the Middle Ages where people had to trust authority for the truth, in the 20th century people had to bow to the law when the War on Drugs took off and made all psychedelics illegal, which also stopped any further research into these substances.
This was our psychedelic Dark Ages or if you will our psychedelic Middle Ages.
Then came the light in the early 90s with studies into DMT by Rick Strassman for example. This and other ventures, together with the poetry of the bard Terence McKenna (through the 80s and 90s) and other psychedelic preachers led to a revival and new found respect for psychedelics. This culminated at the turn of the century into what is now referred to as the Psychedelic Renaissance.
Similarly, to the periods of history the Renaissance occurred right after the Middle Ages. But then what?
Well now we have multiple research centers that focus on psychedelics, and multiple studies and they have grown exponentially. As in history the Scientific Revolution followed the Renaissance, so has it also when it concerns psychedelics.
But we are not in the psychedelic Scientific Revolution. No, we are not.
We have entered a new era. We are in the Psychedelic Industrialization. As psychedelics are becoming more and more legal a market has emerged, money can be made… psychedelics have become a product. Don’t believe me. Here is ONE example:
I still hear people utter the phrase Psychedelic Renaissance. But that period is over. The psychedelic Scientific Revolution. That has also passed.
We are in the Psychedelic Industrialization and we have to be very careful, perhaps it is already too late. In a sense the train has left the station.
This is not good. Not good at all. Psychedelics is a sacrament. It should be a gift. It should not be a product to be marketed and sold. It was a big mistake to make it legal, or to try and make it legal.
I am totally fine to have it legal to use, to grow the plants or mushrooms or to synthesize it… but it should not be legal to sell or profit from it.
The only people that should be allowed to charge money for it are indigenous peoples. But here in the Western World we should not have made it into a fucking market. To me that is blasphemy of the highest order.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Seth-Ra
Bookmarks