The Religion That Has No Name:

The Persecution of Psychedelic Spirituality

1. The Psychedelic Community as a New Religious Movement
The word psychedelic was coined by Humphry Osmond in 1957, its etymological root is meant to
indicate the spirit-revealing or soul-manifesting nature of the chemicals concerned.
We know, beyond all doubt, that many of the users of psychedelic drugs such as LSD, DMT,
Mescaline and Magic Mushrooms claim that these chemicals cause them to have experiences they
describe as spiritually significant: usually in terms of allowing new spiritual insights about the
nature of their being and its relationship to experience and the world, or in terms of some kind of
spiritual healing effect.
Many, if not most, individuals who repeatedly use psychedelics do so with a primary motivation to
explore the spiritual benefits of psychedelics: it is therefore, a part of their spiritual lives. Many of
those individuals feel that the drugs themselves are sacred gifts, they use drugs like LSD to bring
about experiences and states of being that are somehow spiritual, mystical and divine.
All around the world, right now, there are individuals who are using psychedelic drugs. Not just
individuals though, there is an increasingly cohesive and open community of psychedelic users: all
united by the shared belief that they have been benefited by, and will continue to benefit from,
psychedelic drugs.
Is it not conceivable that this community of individuals, who use the same sacraments, share similar
spiritual motivations, and hold similar core beliefs represent a new religious or spiritual movement?
It is, essentially, a New Religious Movement (NRM) that is not allowed to become an organised
religion. It cannot be given a name, nor can its places of communal gathering be made to explicit. It
includes a great variety of belief and practice: but then the religions of Hinduism and Buddhism,
even Christianity all show a great variety of forms and expressions also. It has its own set of texts,
but none are adopted as dogma, there is no cannon: but then many of the historical forms of human
spirituality did not have a cannon either. It even has its own unique forms of artistic expression and
aesthetic style, rife with themes of transcendence and spiritual discovery.
In Europe, especially in the summer, there are certain festivals attended primarily by the
psychedelic community. At these festivals, an obvious form of neo-shamanism manifests itself:
complete with music, dancing, and mind-altering chemicals, components of many shamanic
traditions from all over the world. In fact, these festivals are becoming increasingly popular all over
the world.
One of the implications of the continued growth of psychedelic festival culture is that the
community of psychedelic users is becoming, with the help of the internet, more organised and
more cohesive. Furthermore, now this spiritual movement has community meeting spaces, with
their own rituals, traditions, codes and conventions. At these gatherings there is a very strong sense
of this community people care for one another and help one another to have an enjoyable time,
there is a sense of shared purpose and unity that is enjoyed by many when the psychedelic
community meet.
Some might say this isnt spirituality, it is just hedonism. Verily there are some who attend
psychedelic festivals just to have fun, but there are others who feel, nonetheless, that psychedelic
chemicals are an important aspect of their spiritual lives. Furthermore, who is to say that spirituality

cannot be fun? Mystical texts from all world religions, including the bible, speak of ecstatic and
joyous experiences that are encountered on the spiritual path: the Old Testament even describes
singing and dancing as a result of spiritual attainment.
When I walk down the street of Oxford on a Saturday night I see fighting, I see people throwing up,
I hear glass smashing: people become rude, inconsiderate, violent. I have never seen a fight at a
psychedelic music festival, I dont see people stumbling around and throwing up, what I do see is
people having the time of their lives and forming lasting bonds with people in the process.
Returning to the issue though, the psychedelic community needs to consider how it can go about
becoming recognised for the legitimate spiritual movement that it is so that it can enjoy the same
acceptance and according protections that are afforded to other religious communities.
In the mean time, psychedelic spiritualists will continue to be a persecuted and oppressed minority
religious group. For walking their spiritual path, they face imprisonment, with all the hardships and
consequences-on-life that are entailed by it. Lets have a brief look at how this persecution came
about.
2. Christian Puritanism & Moral Panics: The War on Drugs as Hysteria
We must recognise that for the last thousand years (and then some) the population of Europe has
had its native religious/spiritual practices oppressed by the dominator religion that is Christianity.
Wherever Christianity went it systematically destroyed any competing forms of spirituality: often
through violence. In the background, that force is still an undercurrent of our society.
Think about it. The American political system is still so obviously fixated on the values of
Puritanical Christianity: that kind of good christian wholesomeness that is expected of any
presidential candidate, the obsession with sexual misconduct on the part those in the public sphere,
and wariness of the many other things deemed viceful within the puritanical Christian tradition. Is it
a coincidence that this moral panic, this war on drugs, has come from a country whose dominant
spiritual power is a form Christian puritanism?

Like the witch-trials, the War on Drugs is another hysterical moral panic:
something is judged as evil, all the good people respond with unspeakable inhumanity.

A moral panic, and not the first. Can we think of some other examples from history where the
Christian majority have deemed something to be evil or morally wrong and responded with
unspeakable violence? The witch-hunts, for example, which also took on a distinctive ferocity midst
the North American puritans. The Inquisition, a few hundred years of torture, persecution,
inhumanity: based on a response to what is perceived to be an evil.
Perhaps you think the comparison extreme? Its not like were burning people at the stake or
torturing them, right? But we do lock people up: vast swathes of people (usually the most socially
disadvantaged) all in response to the supposed evil of drug-use. As in the inquisition, we
interrogate people, we use fear and intimidation to make them betrays other human beings: is it not
torture to go through a judicial system and be locked away for decades of your life?

The War on Drugs is just another inquisition.

The Holy/Good people exercising hegemonic domination over the evil people,
and in the process performing unspeakable evils themselves.
Is it not an evil thing to do this to an individual? It is a harmful action after all, to lock them in a
prison for years on end. Is the act of imprisoning some one for using psychedelics not, in fact, more
evil than that individuals offence of using psychedelics?
When an activity carries risks only to oneself, does that make it unethical? If so, are horse-riding
and mountain climbing unethical to? Clearly then the idea that drug use is morally wrong cannot be
based on the risks associated with their use. If it is not a moral wrong, then to punish people for it is
not just, and is unethical.
The War on Drugs will be viewed by historians as just another silly moral panic, a hysteria that got
carried away with itself, but a hysteria like never before. A hysteria fueled by new mass-media
technologies, a hysteria on an unprecedented scale, and one which does an unprecedented amount
of harm.

It is interesting to consider the extent to which Puritanical Christianity has been embraced by, what
some might consider to be the new dominator religion, Capitalism; and the extent to which
spiritual movements which are perceived to be a threat to capitalism are marginalised, and in this
case, forbidden.
3. Conclusion
The psychedelic community, as it stands, is a new religious/spiritual movement. Its members are
subject to persecution and oppression, as they have been for the last fifty years.
Much of modern drug culture is simply an extension of much older spiritual traditions. Modern
Britain has new sacraments now, and its tribal dances are to dubstep from massive sound-systems
This war on drugs is just a part of a millenia-old pattern of organised religion dominating more
spontaneous & experiential forms of spirituality. It manifests the values of the puritanical religious
fanaticism which has come to dominate American political culture.
If our Right to Religious & Spiritual Freedom is to mean anything, then it must accommodate
entheogenic and psychedelic compounds , which are an important component to many forms of
spirituality.
One source of hope is the increasing unity of the psychedelic community around the world.
Cognitive Liberty UK
July 26, 2012