When Prayer Meets Medicine

Stephen Gray

When the peyote takes effect and the energy really gets rolling, the songs begin to sing the singers, the drum is a living spirit, and the fire has things to show us. It's a radically different way to pray. If we can find skillful ways to combine the visionary, teaching, healing medicines with our intentions, with our prayers, a whole new landscape of possibility opens up. (more)

Ascension, Entheogens & Inter-dimensional Exploration: The RS Retreat

Marisa Smith

RS's latest retreat, The Supernatural: Exploring Other Dimensions, brought together brilliant hearts and minds on some of today's most intriguing topics.  If you've ever wondered what do you'd get if you mixed 2012, ascension, entheogens & inter-dimensional exploration, this retreat just might have offered an answer. (more)

Entheogens in "The Guardian"

Trish Nguyen

Author Alexander Beiner details how psychedelic experiences have changed his life by deepening his spiritual practice in a recent article published in the UK’s The Guardian.

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Singing to the Plants

Stephan V. Beyer

Some of them will drink ayahuasca, and some will not; some will drink for vision, and some for cleansing. Some drink in order to see the face of the envious and resentful enemy who has made them ill.... All are here for don Roberto to heal them. (more)

The Way of Light: A Healing Journey with Ayahuasca

Rak Razam

So there I am sitting in the dark, exposed to the naked raw emotion of true love as Maria sings to me, and when she is finished there's a pregnant pause like she's waiting for me to speak. For a second my tourist reflexes kick in and I think she wants something, dinero, that I've been drawn back to the level of buy and sell. But she doesn't ask for money. That's not what the mother does. (more)

Adventures with Mazatec Mint: Exploring the Mind-Bending World of Salvia Divinorum

David Jay Brown

A number of researchers think that salvinorin A, the potent dissociative psychedelic compound found in this perennial herb from Oaxaca, may have applications as an antidepressant, an analgesic, and as a therapeutic tool for treating drug addictions, some types of stroke, and Alzheimer's Disease. (more)

Prolegomena to a Guide for the Emerging Yoga Shaman

Allowah

A shift is happening in the yoga world in connection to shamanistic practice, particularly the use of plant sacraments like ayahuasca.  Finally the older generation of yoga teachers who have used ayahuasca for decades are speaking about it more openly. (more)

The Atmosphere of Heaven

Erik Davis

What is it like to take a drug before it is "a drug"? In the late eighteenth century, members of the Pneumatic Institution, an outpost of British medical exploration, pursued the nature of consciousness by sucking down bags of nitrous oxide and concluded that "Nothing exists but thoughts!" (more)

A Quest to Heal HIV with Ayahuasca Shamanism

Robert Tindall

Amazonian medicine has been ahead of the biotech companies for years, and there is now documentation of traditional healers successfully curing cases that Western medicine had been powerless to treat. But can shamanic medicine function outside of its traditional matrix? (more)

Cosmovision: An Aya Odyssey

Rak Razam

The ayahuasca vine has spread her tendrils across the world and a genuine archaic revival was underway. My bags were packed; South America beckoned, and the ancient mysteries of the rainforest awaited. I wanted in on it. (more)

Salvia's Blueprint

Amy George

In my salvia vision, I felt roots growing from my head, through my throat and vocal cords, out of my mouth into the ground. I became afraid at the prospect of being stuck in that spot. My life flashed before my eyes, and I was happy with it. (more)

Heaven and the Hummingbird

Morgan Maher

In this interview, author, healer and psychologist Ross Heaven explores the magic and mystery of San Pedro, its relationship with ayahuasca, and the cross-cultural use of plants for healing. (more)

Divine Voyeurs: Salvia on YouTube

Rak Razam

Salvia divinorum, also known as "Diviner's Sage," has been called "the most powerful hallucinogenic known to mankind" by enthusiasts on the net. So how does it feel to be on salvia with a camera phone in your face? In the post-Jackass, reality-TV generation nothing is sacred. (more)

Romancing the Spirit Vine: A Talk with Margaret De Wys

Adam Elenbaas

A battle with cancer led Margaret De Wys to Ecuador to sit in traditional Ayahuasca ceremonies. After miraculous healings she began an apprenticeship and life-altering romantic relationship with the shaman who healed her. In this interview, Margaret De Wys discusses her story and her new memoir, Black Smoke. (more)

Immanentizing the Eschaton: An Interview with Dennis McKenna

Alexander Price

Ethnopharmacologist Dennis McKenna discusses his brother Terence, the legendary "La Chorerra experiment," and Timewave Zero. (more)

The Wounded Male Geek: My Vision of Terence McKenna

Adam Elenbaas

After a terrific and scary psychedelic journey, I realized that I needed a mentor. I found Terence McKenna. Several years later, during an Ayahuasca ceremony, a vision of Terence taught me to stop relying so heavily on my intellect and reach out from my heart. (more)

A New Eleusis: The Long Trip Isn't Over Yet

Paul Devereux

A new Eleusis would make us aware that we have read but the first few pages of the great book of nature, and make our decisions regarding the environment, foreign relations, the economy, science, and social structures more informed, humane, and sustainable. (more)

Into the Green Underworld (Part 2 of 2)

Daenin Tejeda

"What if we were in a big council and the crows and the wolves and the plant spirits and the gemstone guardians and the ancestors all gave a blessing and offered guidance in how to use fire to create community and peace and connection?" (more)

Into the Green Underworld (Part 1 of 2)

Daenin Tejeda

Although I had never smoked marijuana myself, I noticed that partakers of this plant became susceptible to foreign entities. I decided to investigate, and followed the smoky wisp spirits into the green underworld. (more)

A Psychonaut License: The Psychedelic University

Ido Hartogsohn

Society has mechanisms for the handling of objects which it deems helpful but dangerous. In order to drive a car, for example, you need a license. What if there was a license for exploring your mind? (more)

Will the Real Ayahuasca Tourists Please Stand Up?

Adam Elenbaas

Having drunk in nearly 25 Ayahuasca ceremonies with four different shamans from three different countries on two different continents, I still do not feel capable of defining what makes an Ayahuasca ceremony "medicinal" or "authentic." (more)

Entheogenic Spirituality as a Human Right

Martin W. Ball

U.S. law sees "freedom of religion" as referring primarily to the freedom to believe and secondarily to the freedom to practice. However, something sorely missing from our legal protections is any recognition of the significance of direct spiritual experience itself, including with sacred plants. (more)

Culture, the State, and the Different Uses of "Drugs"

Gilberto Gil

Brazil's former Minister of Culture discusses the ceremonial and religious use of psychoactive substances in his country. (more)

Emerging from the Dark Age: The Revival of Psychedelic Medicine

Charles Shaw

After a forty-year moratorium on research driven by propaganda and political repression, treating some of life’s most challenging illnesses with psychedelic compounds has made a miraculous comeback. A deeply personal story about some of these miracles. (more)