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Did all religions come from the use of psychedelics?

jesusmaker

jesusmaker

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Joined
Jul 24, 2011
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Ottawa/Kingston, Ontario
I have always had a strong belief that religions have been derived from psychedelic plants, and for one reason or another have lost this connection with them and just maintained the values, traditions, rituals, etc. Here is a documentary that I have recently watched that supports this theory, granted most documentaries are totally one sided in viewpoint, I thought this one hit home with some key points.

The Pharmacratic Inquisition

http://theavalonfiles.com/stream/The_Pharmacratic_Inquisition/index.html


What are your thoughts on the subject and the documentary?
 
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jesusmaker said:
I have always had a strong belief that religions have been derived from psychedelic plants, and for one reason or another have lost this connection with them and just maintained the values, traditions, rituals, etc. Here is a documentary that I have recently watched that supports this theory, granted most documentaries are totally one sided in viewpoint, I thought this one hit home with some key points.

The Pharmacratic Inquisition

http://theavalonfiles.com/stream/The...ion/index.html

What are your thoughts on the subject and the documentary?
Click to expand...


That's the Terence McKenna's theory. Pick up Food of the Gods, for a nice and informed discussion of the subject. McKenna's go even farther suggesting that the evolution of the neuronal basis for abstract thought began when the first hominids began ingesting psilocybin mushrooms.

For me at least, not easily dismissed
 
I'm sure many people gained divine inspiration from them. Or took them and gained some sort of divinity from the feeling. There also writings about some portion of the brain, seizures/psychedelic experiences, and holy imagery. Can't for the life of remember the portion of the brain or the study and don't have time to search. Sure someone else read of it though.
 
Religion originates as an answer to many pressing existential questions that arose from higher cognitive functioning, IMO. Psychedelics could sure amplify these questions but to claim that all world religion has its basis in psychedelia is... a little outlandish to me.
 
i wouldn't say all religions are derived from psychedelic experiences, but i tend to think that many are. Almost if not all major religions have use of entheogens very early in their history. And it isn't outlandish to assume that use of such plants predates the large world religions today. Some religions that don't have much mention of entheogens in their texts use various meditative & yogic practices that elicit somewhat similar states. Whether a religion focused on that route or the plant based substances seems to be more a matter of biodiversity than of choice.

Ultimately i don't think this question is definitively answerable, but it does make for some interesting discussion. As for the Pharmacratic Inquisition, i think that doc takes things a little far and makes some hazy inferences, as does McKenna, but i think the basic premise is still valid.
 
any major dude said:
i wouldn't say all religions are derived from psychedelic experiences, but i tend to think that many are. Almost if not all major religions have use of entheogens very early in their history. And it isn't outlandish to assume that use of such plants predates the large world religions today. Some religions that don't have much mention of entheogens in their texts use various meditative & yogic practices that elicit somewhat similar states. Whether a religion focused on that route or the plant based substances seems to be more a matter of biodiversity than of choice.

Ultimately i don't think this question is definitively answerable, but it does make for some interesting discussion. As for the Pharmacratic Inquisition, i think that doc takes things a little far and makes some hazy inferences, as does McKenna, but i think the basic premise is still valid.
Click to expand...

I think we have a chicken-egg scenario here, was religion born of psychedelia or did religions incorporate psychedelic tools into their ceremonies?

My guess is that both depending on which religion, but I am almost certain that it isn't fundamentally one or the other.
 
I think many of the original spiritual belief systems and such were developed through psychedelics, it was the fall in psychedelic use if anything - rather than the rise, that led to modern religion though.

I don't think psychedelics lend themselves to monotheism ;)
 
I very much doubt that, if psychedelics did play any role, they would have CAUSED religion (at least the major ones, I'm sure many native beliefs may be strongly influenced by psychedelics) to come into being. I think it's certainly possible that certain people important in the development or proliferation of a certain religion may have ingested a plant or mushroom and mistaken the resulting hallucinations and perceptual distortions as contact with a higher power. I think religion itself simply came into being due to fear of the unknown (which was a lot thousands of years ago) and a general desire for purpose.
 
No, I don't believe psychedelics played a part in any religion. Certainly none of the big ones like christianity, buddhism, Islam etc. People who use psychedelics tend to think that tripping is the only way you can feel ecstasy or wonder at the world. But just look around you and you find people who play golf feel exactly the same "unity with life". Or people who climb mountains. Or people who live in nice areas of the country. Or people who have children. Or people who fall in love. The list is endless.

It's easy to get into a narrow minded view that psychedelics are the only way anyone can feel religious feelings, but remember that's just because you enjoy psychedelics. If we were on a golf board and you said "I get religious feelings playing St Andrews at sunset" everyone else on the board would say "Yeah, me too. Perhaps golf is the root of all religion".

My guess is the root cause of religion was the fear of death. And it was then quickly realised that you could bring people to order more easily if you had the authority of God and "power over death" behind you.
 
Religion came from principle figures who were enlightened. The doctrine is just layer upon layer of discourse that has been created after the fact, long after the enlightened one has died. Jesus, the Buddha, Mohammad, Abraham, etc... they were all people with special insight. I think the era of the world that they came from was very different than the one which exists now. Something about it was ripe for cultivating prophets and major figures that could cause sweeping changes in human consciousness.

Psychedelics may have been part of that. They certainly weren't as demonized back then as they are now. It would seem that a lot of the tools of nature which people simply turned to automatically in the millennia before and now demonized to the point that people have zero relationship with them. Most herbal traditions that have survived fanatical modernization/scientific degeneration were derived from spiritual communication with plants.

If you want to read more about plant spirit medicine and how humanity has always used this mode of communication of medicine and knowledge, I recommend reading "The Lost Language of Plants" by Stephen Harrod Buhner or "Plant Spirit Medicine" by Eliot Cowan. Both authors are very skilled at weaving academia, spirituality, and poetry together in their writing, so they make for a very holistically enjoyable read!
 
All of these prophets fasted, went on some journey into the desert and had a vision of meeting god.. Sounds pretty much they were high on something.
 
^ or just crazy. Many of the prophets in religious texts sound like they have schizophrenia lol. Old testament is just filled with crazy ass stories that a schizophrenic would come up with.
 
I think there's an awful lot of wishful thinking going on here. There's going to be a fundamental difference between your experience of tripping in the 21st century and some guy 2000 years ago. You're educated, you know it won't do you any harm, so you can sit there pontificating "Ah yes, this feels quite mystical, reminds me of that account in a book I read about God"

Try looking at it from the perspective of some uneducated guy 2000 years ago. He has no idea what the trip means, he has fuck-all understanding of ideas of the brain or how it works, probably lives in a hut and digs holes to shit in. The idea that he's going to be able to connect tripping with intellectual ideas about God is pretty fucking far-fetched isn't it. My guess is he'd run around a bit, run to someone elses hut for help and they'd try and beat the demon out of him. Even in the 21st century people have bad trips - can you imagine how high the bad trip rate would be back then?

If you want to read more about plant spirit medicine and how humanity has always used this mode of communication of medicine and knowledge

I'm not sure humanity has always used tripping as a way of life. It's mostly concentrated in a few isolated spots in South America. And even then it wasn't as if people just went round and tripped for fun or to "meet God". There was usually one guy who tripped for the tribe and it was almost exclusively for "medical purposes". If your kid was dying and nothing else worked you went to the bloke who tripped to see if he could find any help for you. Like the africans went to a witchdoctor. The placebo effect in these cases was the key - even now if an african witchdoctor tells someone they are going to die the people are so gullible they often rapidly die just from placebo.

A lot of the "evidence" that Mckenna suggests for tripping in Africa has been shown to be bullshit - that drawing of "the mushroom man" with mushrooms coming out of his body for example. It turns out that drawing used in the book is a "representation" of the real drawing that was done by Mckennas wife. When you look at the real drawing it doesn't look anything like a fucking mushroom man.

I do accept that it's possible to read psychedelic use into religions - you read the book of revelations "A serpent appeared from the sea and a diamond dropped out of it's arsehole" - "Like wow, he must be tripping!!". But you can read it into anything - voodoo, the moonies. Even that fucking idiot who created Scientology - "Aliens from another planet? Telling mankind how to live? He must...have BEEN TRIPPING ON DMT!!!".

Nah, it's bullshit.
 
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Strongheart said:
All of these prophets fasted, went on some journey into the desert and had a vision of meeting god.. Sounds pretty much they were high on something.
Click to expand...

Yeah but all of the major religions are drawn from the same bullshit stories arn't they - you can trace most of the tales in the Koran, the bible etc back to old myths that pre-date the religion. I imagine if you were trying to form a religion you'd look and go "Yeah, we're gonna need a tale about him going out into the desert and finding God cos that's the tale in all the other myths".
 
i think psychedelics (dmt, Psilocybin) explain some of the stories in the bible, and they also had an influence on the bible

can you fix the link?
 
Another book wich sidetracks on this subject is Graham Hancock`s Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind.
If ancient shamans/witch doctors etc. ate psychedelic plants(wich they did) then what would stop them believing it was the spirit world they were seeing? As some believe even today.
 
I would say no, probably a part of it yes but not necessarily everything because mystical states that form the core of spiritual experience can come from meditation as well as (is theorized) frontal lobe epilepsy and stuff like that. We have no idea whether use of psychedelic mushrooms predates frontal lobe epilepsy or the other way around, but it hardly matters. Yes according to mcKenna it served a function in the evolution of consciousness but as far as religions go, the ones we now have in the world seem to have come from roughly the time culture and written language converged - of course different cultures go back to different times when 'known history' began.
At the very least some of the patriarchs would have had an aptitude for altered states of consciousness, whether it is from something like unusual frontal lobe activity, mushrooms, or something else.

"Revelation" or as I call it second-hand religious experience is what prevails in a lot of parts in the world now, but I think that always comes quite a while after mystical (first-hand) experiences. Sadly there can be a lot of distortion from time and cultural development and purposeful editing in between. A cult would be an example of the most extreme abominations of that, although one might argue that there is mental pathology involved in cases like that i.e. delusions is a big one.
 
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