Psychedelic Snake Oil: Psychedelic Pseudo Science, the Fake CEQ, & the Astroturfed Psychedelic Renaissance[TM]

Michael Hoffman, Aug. 22, 2025

Art by Sam Gray

Contents:

links work on desktop Edge/Chrome:

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Wasson’s Academic Fraud, Obstructionism, Censorship of Brinckmann Book Citation, Lying about What He Believes, Dissimulation at “Consult”

Wasson’s academic fraud/ obstructionism on p. 180 of his 1968 book SOMA where he heavily censored and misrepresented the TWO letters (not one, as Wasson lies) that the top art historian Erwin Panofsky wrote him in 1952. 

Both letters STRONGLY recommended consulting* the book Tree Stylizations in Medieval Paintings (Albert Brinckmann, 1906) https://egodeaththeory.org/2020/12/11/brinckmann-mushroom-trees-asymmetrical-branching/  (an actual proper academic published work).

Yet in the same paragraph where Wasson shows part of one of Panofsky’s letters, with that citation silently withheld, Wasson berates and insults mycologists for not “consulting” the art historians.

Recently, Ronald Huggins has the AUDACITY to describe Brinckmann’s censored-by-Wasson book as a “NOTED” exception to the rule that “art historians never think or write anything about trees, because trees are merely incidental in medieval art”.  🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

In fact,  trees are the pinnacle of transcendent meaning/ the message, in medieval art.

Foraging for Psychedelic Mushrooms in the Wrong Forest: The Great Canterbury Psalter as a Medieval Test Case (Ronald Huggins, 2024) https://www.academia.edu/118659519/Foraging_for_Psychedelic_Mushrooms_in_the_Wrong_Forest_The_Great_Canterbury_Psalter_as_a_Medieval_Test_Case & https://egodeaththeory.org/2024/11/23/huggins-foraging-psychedelic-mushrooms-wrong-forest/ – bets everything on Great Canterbury Psalter > Day 3 of Creation (4 mushroom-trees, popular picture) — and loses, here at Egodeath.com/ EgodeathTheory.WordPress.com.

Improper, Anti-Academic “Consulting” in Place of Scholarship (to Prevent Scholarship).

What books and writings and paragraphs and articles should we “consult”, Wasson? The only thing any art historian ever wrote, as of 1952, about either trees or mushrooms, was Tree Stylizations in Medieval Paintings (Brinckmann, 1906) https://egodeaththeory.org/2020/12/11/brinckmann-mushroom-trees-asymmetrical-branching/

And that’s what Wasson censors out, so what library works are we to “consult”? You mean, phone up? Why, because no academic ever wrote/published anything at all, so why then “consult” them in person? THEY HAVE NO AUTHORITY on this (don’t say “related topics”) topic of trees, or, of mushrooms. 1952 academics are COMPLETE IGNORAMUSES having never thought or written anything about trees (per Ronald Huggins ’24) or about mushroom (per Wasson SOMA p. 180 1968).

Every aspect of Wasson’s argument is pure dissimulation, propaganda, B S, and he lies about what he — we really can be certain — privately believes. He lies about what he privately believes; pretends to not believe there’s mushroom imagery in Christian art but he privately knows that’s the case. He is banker for pope; max conflict of interest.

Panofsky MUST have cited some in his “letter” (a Wasson lie; it is letterS; directly relevant thus a lie to write “letter”).

https://egodeaththeory.org/nav/#Panofsky —

Titles of this Page

  • Psychedelic Snake Oil
  • Psychedelic Snake Oil: Psychedelic Pseudo Science, Fake CEQ Reduced to Healing, and the Top-Down Astroturfed Psychedelic Renaissance[TM]

That snake oil image is used in my 2021 page:

https://egodeaththeory.org/2021/01/07/idea-development-page-9/#Hanegraaff-Proposes-Non-Drug-Entheogens

Hunt Priest, Founder of Ligare Psychedelic Christianity Org, Let Go

Hunt Priest fell from heaven – founder of Ligare psychedelic Christian org https://www.google.com/search?q=satan+fell+like+lightning

Serves him right, for writing “Psilocybin in Christian history? No, didn’t you hear? Allegro’s been debunked”

https://egodeaththeory.org/2025/05/15/moving-past-mysticism-in-psychedelic-science-article-debate-series/#Psychedelic-Priest-Deposed-by-the-Episcopal-Church

The Grifty Group Blew Up

the Grifty Group — Roland Griffiths team at Johns Hopkins Dept. of Psychedelic Pseudo Science — blew itself to pieces

Web Search: Matthew Johnson Hopkins: “Sorry, Page Not Found”

Matthew “Lose the Buddha Statue, and I Really Mean It!” Johnson

JHU.edu > Experts > Matthew Johnson:
https://hub.jhu.edu/experts/profiles/matthew-johnson/ –>
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/profiles/results/directory/profile/0800020/matthew-johnson –>

Sorry, Page Not Found – If you have a medical emergency, please dial 911 on your phone.

The “Religious Leaders Study” Fiasco

Matt Johnson filed ethics violations complaints against his Hopkins team, so the 10-years-long-awaited article has “Conflicts of Interest” section that says:

“Do not use this article, it is unclean for building-up Science.“

Sections / entries from page Moving Past Mysticism in Psychedelic Science:

Motivation for this Page

Sent to whistleblower last night, the snake oil image that came across when zooming through my pages looking for images yesterday

just thought of how funny such a new page called just “Psychedelic Snake Oil”

I Advised Portland Oregon Law Group in 2021 about the experience of the threat of catastrophic loss of control, and requirements of how to teach per Great Canterbury Psalter

https://egodeaththeory.org/nav/#training-requirements —
copy of links from there:

Training Requirements

Whistleblower Exposes by Travis Kitchens, Matthew Johnson, Brendan Borrell, & Joe Welker

https://egodeaththeory.org/2025/05/15/moving-past-mysticism-in-psychedelic-science-article-debate-series/

  • Travis Kitchens articles
  • Moving Past Mysticism in Psychedelic Science debate series – fav page added to sidebar nav

Web Search: Psychedelic Snake Oil

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22psychedelic+snake+oil%22

The Challenging Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) Forces an Outcome of a Giant, Artificial “Grief” Category of Effects, by Ignoring Control-Related Challenges, Where the Real Action’s At

Exposing How the CEQ Sausage Was Made 🤢

Psychedelic-assisisted therapy as a pushed business model to profit Big Pharma, by people who know nothing of the Fear of God that’s packed into psilocybin.

The Challenging Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) forces a business-model driven, Premeditated Outcome, of a Giant Bloated “Grief” Category of Effects, for Profit-Driven “therapy/ healing”, By Simply Discarding and Ignoring the Classic, Hallmark, Control-Related Challenges, Where the Real Action’s At: The {shadow dragon monster}

https://egodeaththeory.org/nav/#CEQ

The Dread ETCLOC 😱🐉🚪🏆

The Experience of the Threat of Catastrophic Loss of Control

The therapists and scientists have NO IDEA what they’re dealing with:
the dread ETCLOC:
experience of the threat of catastrophic loss of control

Omitted in the most-ugly process of fabricating the Challenging Experience Questionnaire (CEQ):
OAV questionnaire’s Item 54: I was afraid to lose my self-control.

https://egodeaththeory.org/nav/#CEQ

Ann Taves’ expose of Bogus Model of Mysticism, Stace 1960

https://egodeaththeory.org/2025/05/15/moving-past-mysticism-in-psychedelic-science-article-debate-series/#mystical-and-other-alterations-in-sense-of-self-an-expanded-framework-for-studying-nonordinary-experiences-taves-2020

todo: what’s the scope of this rebuttal?

Jeffrey Breau’s expose of Bogus Model of Mysticism, Stace 1960

https://egodeaththeory.org/2025/05/15/moving-past-mysticism-in-psychedelic-science-article-debate-series/#psychometric-brahman

todo: what’s the scope of this rebuttal?

This New Field as an Opportunity for Bad Actors to Takeover to Push “Tear Down Civilization” Propaganda

Psychedelic Injustice: How Identity Politics Poisons the Psychedelic Renaissance (Hatsis, 2025)

God’s Flesh: Teonanácatl: The True History of the Sacred Mushroom (Irvin 2022)

Conceptual Errors, Misinterpretations, and Bad Argumentation from Entheogen Scholars

Wouter “Star Destroyer” Hanegraaff: non-drug entheogens; and a “Cosmos Model” WITH NO STARS

Actually, the psychedelic state is from ingesting psychedelic chemicals, not “non-drug entheogenic practices, in the wide sense”.

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Hanegraaff tripping on non-drug psychedelics:

https://egodeaththeory.org/nav/#Hanegraaff

Hanegraaff put the stars into his “Rejected” wastebasket, to protect rebirth (phase 1 of 2) from being into heimarmene/ no-free-will/ eternalism.

Every schoolboy knows that when you look up, you see sphere 8 (the fixed stars).

Moving beyond sphere 7 (Saturn) does not mean, yet, transcending cosmic heimarmene, as he wrongly writes; only moving beyond sphere 8 (fixed stars) is transcending cosmic heimarmene.

The material cosmos = fixed stars = sphere 8. NOT sphere 7 (Saturn); the ancient texts contradict Hanegraaff’s fabrication.

He wrote a tower of books and articles about sound scholarship in the historiography of esotericism – so, citation needed., that sphere 8, beyond Saturn, is “beyond the cosmos, beyond heimarmene”.

Back to remedial ancient Ptolemaic cosmology 101, Darth Wouter, destroyer of the fate-soaked fixed stars:

The Eighth Gate: The Mithraic Lion-Headed Figure and the Platonic World-Soul, David Ulansey, http://www.mysterium.com/eighthgate.html

Mithras and the Hypercosmic Sun, David Ulansey, http://www.mysterium.com/hypercosmic.html

  1. Rebirth phase 1, from sphere 7 (Saturn) into sphere 8 (fixed stars) = your soul portion halts stuck in the stars fastened to the celestial cross for eternity at heimarmene/ no-free-will/ eternalism.
  2. Rebirth phase 2, from sphere 8 (fixed stars) into sphere 9 (precession outside the physical cosmos) = your spirit portion, only, transcends heimarmene/ no-free-will/ eternalism.

Thus the title “On the 8th and 9th”, not “On the 8th/9th”. 8 and 9 are DIFFERENT, unlike Hanegraaff depicts, conflating them.

Your soul halts, stuck in the [5000, not just 7] stars, fastened to the celestial cross for eternity, never rises higher; only your spirit is lifted outside the 5000 stars. [August 22, 2025]

What ancient text says that the outer boundary of the physical cosmos is sphere 7 (Saturn), as Hanegraaff mostly describes it?

He fabricates — CITATION NEEDED, Hanegraaff! — and projects onto hermetic texts what is simply not there, an outsider’s confused, imagined tale of:

Transcendent Knowledge = mental model transformation from eternalism to possibilism; from disempowered no-free-will, to transcendent freewill power.

Hanegraaff VIOLATES HIS CLAIM TO BE DRIVEN BY THE TEXT EVIDENCE.

No ancient text says that rebirth from Saturn is immediately into the level “above heimarmene”.

I would have seen that text by now. I posted extremely detailed passages here.

First you must reconcile with and reach the Fate-ruled fixed stars, in the first rebirth phase. Only after that, do you arrive “beyond the stars” in the 2nd rebirth phase.

He places “beyond the [7] stars” too soon. ie his bunk, confused and confusing subheading Beyond the Stars.

7 planetary stars of the cosmos +
5000 fixed stars of the cosmos

The planetary stars are wandering, relative to the fixed stars.

Mental model transformation in the loose cognitive association state from psilocybin is from possibilism to eternalism.

The mind ends up with integrated possibilism/ eternalism thinking, transcending any single mental model, in a harmonious complementary, fecund combination of two different perspectives on control and posssibiltiy.

Crop by Michael Hoffman
  1. {stand on left foot} = naive possibilism-thinking. sphere 1-7, planets, Saturn.
  2. {stand on right foot} = basic eternalism-thinking. sphere 8: fixed stars.
  3. {stand on no foot} = integrated possibilism/eternalism thinking. sphere 9: precession, beyond the stars.

Hatsis’ Deleted Sites and Articles with Logical Fallacies backed up by His Rich Gallery of mushroom imagery in Christian art, to Prove No Secret Christian Amanita Cult, therefore no mushrooms in Christian art

https://egodeaththeory.org/nav/#Hatsis

https://egodeaththeory.org/2025/08/17/psychedelic-injustice-how-identity-politics-poisons-the-psychedelic-renaissance-hatsis-2025/#book-review-by-michael-hoffman

David the Amanita Expert Tells Psychedelic Church Service and Book Club, Amanita Is the Psychedelic that Is Your Heritage [ie., Psilocybin Is Not]

Recognizing Mushroom Imagery in Medieval Art

The Towering Edifice of Grand Psychedelic Science Rests on a Foundation of the Bogus, “Unitive” Model of Mysticism (Covert Neo-Advaita), not the Relational Model of Mysticism that’s Depicted in Greek Myth, Religious Art, and Christian Mysticism

The False, “Unitive” Model of Mysticism Held by Everyone

Houot’s Master’s Thesis Accepted by Thesis Committee Because Says “Indigenous Shamans Good, Western Mystics Bad”

https://egodeaththeory.org/nav/#Alan-Houot

Western Mystics Suck and Fail b/c Resort to Surrenderism, while Indigenous Shamans Have Sophisticated High Tech that Gives them Full Control of High-Dose Psilocybin via Technologies of Drum, Chant, & Dance

Crop and annotations by Cybermonk; art by Eadwine 1200 A.D., Great Canterbury Psalter

The New Phrenology: Science Proves the Brain Turns Orange

Psychedelic Brain Scans an Exercise in Outright Futility & Fraud, Trying to Generate Results, to Impress the Rubes

vid title: Transcendent Knowledge Podcast Episode 6
ch: Max Freakout
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLUQEVmMmKQ&t=300s = 5:00 minutes


search: psychedelic phrenology brain scan
https://www.google.com/search?q=psychedelic+phrenology+brain+scan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology

quote Max Freakout podcast Transcendent Knowledge podcast “orange”
https://egodeaththeory.org/?s=phrenology – solution: find “carhart”:

https://egodeaththeory.org/2020/11/07/transcendent-knowledge-podcast-episodes/#Episode-6
Go to YouTube > More… > Show Transcript > click text of transcript > Find: orange

eg:

“neuroscientist so we’re going to look at all these flashy you

5:42know pictures of brains lit up with orange when they’re under the influence of LSD and think wow you know and it’s a

5:50lot of the feedback that I’ve had because I’ve been putting a lot more effort into promoting the podcast now

ack that I’ve had because I’ve been putting a lot more effort into promoting the podcast now

5:56that we’ve got some real theme shows I find it easier to promote those around the internet and the vast majority of

The reaction to Carhart-Harris (with the sole exception of Michael Hoffman) has been rube-like; “How can you possibly criticize that, he’s showing us all these wonderful things about what psychedelics due to the brain”, and I’m calling the bluff

vid title: Transcendent Knowledge Podcast Episode 6
ch: Max Freakout
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLUQEVmMmKQ&t=240s = 4:00

“The vast majority of the feedback I’ve been getting — in fact with the sole exception of Michael Hoffman — has been to has been very rube-like;

it’s been just following on from the from the supposed meaningfulness of Robin Carhart-Harris’s results and saying:

“well how can you possibly criticize that? you know he’s showing us all these wonderful things about what psychedelics due to the brain.”

“And i’m i’m calling the bluff, and seems to be not very well understood exactly where where we you and I are really coming from in critiquing it in this way”

Concerned with Publicity: Don’t Want to Try to Explain Simulation of Psychotic Episodes to the Press; You Want the Bright, Shiny Orangeification of the Brain, to Spin to People

vid title: Transcendent Knowledge Podcast Episode 6
ch: Max Freakout
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLUQEVmMmKQ&t=600s = 10:00

11:30 – Cyberdisciple recomm Benny Shanon’s approach.

Hyper-Materialist, Cognitive-Eliminating “Cognitive Neuroscience”

13:45 – Max Freakout says psychedelic science is materialist – understatement. See articles by Matthew Johnson strongly advocating a marketing posture of hardcore reductionist eliminative materialism sold as “naturalism”:
https://egodeaththeory.org/2025/05/15/moving-past-mysticism-in-psychedelic-science-article-debate-series/#Consciousness-Religion-and-Gurus

I COULD GO ON…

See Also

Roasting Entheogen Scholarship: How the Field of Entheogen Scholarship Was Wrecked by the Amanita Primacy Fallacy

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Author: egodeaththeory

http://egodeath.com

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