Anthropology

União do Vegetal, Looking Glass Peyote Church, Santo Daime

In the União do Vegetal (UDV), leadership is elected.  UDV is organized across a four-tier hierarchical structure, the upper level is not accessible to women. ​In Looking Glass Peyote Church, peyote requires a DNA test previous to use.​Santo Daime, political power is based on the charisma of their leaders, with the succession going to their kin. From…

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Anthropology

The dire need for systemic critique within psychedelic communities

Initially, COMPASS was a non-profit organization that espoused interest in establishing a psychedelic hospice center on the Isle of Man and solicited help from numerous psychedelic researchers. However, after engaging those researchers and receiving invaluable insight and knowledge, COMPASS announced that they were pivoting to a for-profit approach, focusing on treatment-resistant depression.  There is unfortunately a…

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Anthropology

What is the legality of psilocybin mushrooms?

*photo not for identification purposes. Countries where psilocybin is somewhat legal… United StatesIt’s legal to grow psilocybin mushrooms in New Mexico, United States – and there’s even a religious group devoted to their sacramental use ; an established religous organization with devoted members and allies in every state in America.​ MexicoPsilocybin is officially illegal to possess,…

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Anthropology

Initiation into a Living Planet

One of the puzzles of climate science is the persistence of the Holocene Optimum – ten thousand years of anomalously stable climate that has allowed civilization to flourish. Science, as far as I can tell, attributes this basically to good luck. I have encountered among indigenous people a completely different explanation…  …that the rituals performed…

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Anthropology

One river – the mystery of manna

“Once I tried to explain heaven to a young woman,” she said, smiling, as she poured Shultes a cup of tea. “I said it was as beautiful place, a place where there are no tears. She asked me whether I had been there. I said no. I explained that only the dead know heaven. Then…

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Anthropology

Integration : special mushroom issue

It is known that many psychotropic mushrooms (above all, Psilocybe and Panaeo/us genera) live in dung of certain quadrupeds and in particular bovines, cervides and equines. This specific ecological phenomenom cannot but have been taken into account with regard to the sacramental use of psychotropic mushrooms, leading to the creation of mystico-religious relations between the mushroom and…

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Anthropology

In defense of the use of sacred plants in the americas

Since their inception, international policies toward drugs have been characterized by being racist, classist, colonialist, and created by a Western elite that has failed to consider the diversity of traditional uses for plants and psychoactive substances. …the importance of these insights into psychoactive plants and their molecules, the diverse areas of research yet to be…

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Anthropology

The whole fungus: civil

Narcotics Control Board calls for decriminalisation of narcotic drug use. The Deputy Executive Secretary of the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) [in Ghana, Africa], Mr Michael Addo, has called for the decriminalisation of narcotic drug use. The six-day programme brought together lawyers, prosecutors, officials from drug enforcement agencies, psychologists, students and civil society organisations from Anglophone…

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