Psychedelics, Eleusis, and the Invention of Religious Experience (Mosurinjohn 2025)

Michael Hoffman 9:23 p.m. January 19, 2026

Crop by Michael Hoffman

Contents:

links work on desktop Edge/Chrome:

Article title: Psychedelics, Eleusis, and the Invention of Religious Experience (Mosurinjohn, July 2025)

Psychedelics, Eleusis, and the Invention of Religious Experience
Sharday Mosurinjohn & Richard Ascough, July 2025

Web search:
“Psychedelics, Eleusis, and the Invention of Religious Experience”
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Psychedelics%2C+Eleusis%2C+and+the+Invention+of+Religious+Experience%22
I have that article (printed out twice, marked up twice, read twice).

Conference Schedule’s Description of the Talk (Mar. 5, 2025)

https://www.psychedelicsandreligion.info/schedule –

For a copy of this Desc interleaved w/ my commentary, see a below section; find “schedule”.

“This talk responds to the idea that the ancient Eleusynian Mysteries were psychedelic, as claimed by Carl Ruck and co-authors in The Road to Eleusis (1978), revitalized by Brian Muraresku’s The Immortality Key (2020), and popularized by the Overton window-widening Joe Rogan.

“It begins by exposing critical methodological flaws in the arguments, namely, a pattern of presenting claims, followed by mild circumstantial evidence, and then rhetorically solidifying the interpretation of this evidence into a “fact,” on which is built each subsequent round of conjecture.

“In The Road To Eleusis, a speculation like “It seems obvious that an hallucinogen must have induced it” (2008: 47) immediately furnishes the next premise “To identify the Eleusynian drug…” (2008: 47) that begins the following paragraph.

“I argue that these writers’ dogged pursuit of evidentiary mirages has to do with wanting a western civilizational pedigree to dignify the use of stigmatized drugs.

“This myopia is rooted in colonial violence that precludes seriously relating to the many well-documented Indigenous histories of psychedelics, as well as a sort of functional fixedness that prevents seeing contemporary psychedelic practice in continuity with other, and maybe even older, non-pharmacological methods of changing consciousness. 

“I conclude that, given how the psychedelic hypothesis is fundamentally flawed in its study of antiquity, it is a shaky foundation on which to build an argument for modern psychedelic use for therapeutic and spiritual practice.

“I also report on the multi-year history of the rejection of the manuscript on which this talk is based as it is emblematic of the way popular audiences and scholars fail to communicate around psychedelic history and culture, even as psychedelic bioscience scholarship is at the centre of today’s social mainstreaming.”

/ end of description of the talk in the conf. schedule

Video of Talk: The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences (Mosurinjohn, Sep. 29, 2025)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k858spSK-bQ —

Video title:
The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences | Sharday C Mosurinjohn
Sep. 29, 2025
YouTube channel:
Harvard Law School Program on Jewish & Israeli Law
HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

Video’s Desc: [it’s below, but cluttered w/ my commentary – re-post here, todo, w/o my commentary]

The talk was probably given on March 5, 2025. Vid uploaded Sep 2025.

The video’s description is as obnoxious, cocky, ignorant, & unprofessional, as the written summary of the talk, in the conference schedule:

Video’s Desc:

“The persistence of the belief that ancient Western religions were fundamentally psychedelic less a historical hypothesis but a myth serving cross purposes for different psychedelic communities.

“Why is the psychedelic discourse so intent on hanging on to this narrative?

“Why is improvement to the empirical and theoretical rigour of psychedelic history resisted rather than welcomed?

“Why accept a swath of self-serving speculation drawn from the humanities, and then insist on resisting critical analysis?”

Reminds me of this hack journalist:
https://egodeaththeory.org/2020/12/04/scholarly-fail-quotes-hall-of-shame/#plaincourault-been-debunked
Rude and Wrong deserve to be married.

If the idea of the Plaincourault fresco depicting a hallucinogenic mushroom has been debunked, repeatedly, by scholars in the best position to interpret it, why does it persist?

Emma Betuel

Reasons:

  • Plaincourault as mushroom has not debunked repeatedly, or ever.
  • The Plaincourault fresco means mushroom-tree. The medieval art genre of {mushroom-trees} depicts by analogies, mental model transformation from possibilism to eternalism, during 10 psilocybin sessions. Via {mushrooms}, {branching}, {handedness}, and {stability} motifs.
  • Various other reasons for entheogen scholarship (or rather, psychedelic science?) to persist, are named by Mosur. and suchlike writers/articles that I’m reading on mysticism, entheogen history, and psychedelic science.
  • The Baier article High Mysticism is good, tracing cultural history & motives of, not entheogen scholarship, but psychedelic science & its model of mystical experience (narrow, Popular Neo-Advaita).

Distinct topics:

  • entheogen scholarship; extent of psychedelics in relig hist?
  • psychedelic science: Learyean psychometric questionnaires that totally buy into the narrowing, selective, exclusively positive unitive model of mystical experience.
  • philosophy of mystical experience (ie, welding in place, the narrowing, exclusively positive unitive model of mystical experience).

Status of this Webpage

  • contains transcription of 13-minute talk, which is a summary of her article, that finally got pub’d July 2025:
    Psychedelics, Eleusis, and the Invention of Religious Experience
  • with my half-informed, snarky rebuttals.
  • Contains her written summary of her talk – and of her paper – from the conf schedule.
  • with my half-informed, snarky rebuttals.

Now after I threw together this page, I’m ready to re-read my two printouts of her article, which is same as her talk and her summary of the talk, including self contradictions.

She makes several points including “study non-drug psychedelics”.

I consistently get the feeling that little is contributed by Mosur., but, need to read the article more.

Need to convert her academic wind into an executive summary list of takeaways.

Her Rejected Article: Accepted by “psychedelic medicine” journal

I have 3 articles on desk:

  • Likely: Mosurinjohn & Ascough: Psychedelics, Eleusis, and the Invention of Religious Experience – July 2025
  • Not: Mosurinjohn, Roseman, Girn, April 2023: “Drug mystical experience critique“
  • Not: Richard Ascough (not Shar Mosur): Allegro & the the psychedelic mysteries hypothesis, Aug 2025

link to that paper: not yet at my Moving Past Mysticism in Psychedelic Science page. does belong? anyway link it here, then. done.

Video Link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k858spSK-bQ —

Video title:
The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences | Sharday C Mosurinjohn
Sep. 29, 2025
YouTube channel:
Harvard Law School Program on Jewish & Israeli Law
HARVARD LAW SCHOOL
Audio: The first minute is too quiet.

Video’s Desc:

“The persistence of the belief that ancient Western religions were fundamentally psychedelic [is] less a historical hypothesis but a myth serving cross purposes for different psychedelic communities.

[a mere zoom-out rough desc of video. Elastic wording immediately: “less X than Y”, Y = “a myth serving cross purposes – “cross purposes”? How many assertions, ever-vaguer, try to slip in here? -mh]

“Why is the psychedelic discourse so intent on hanging on to this narrative?”

[I could ask similar about dominant Pop narrow theory, Secret Christian Amanita Cult. vs. the important BROAD question,
“What’s the extent of psychedelics in religious history?

Is Sharday HELPING OR NOT, TO ANSWER (POSITIVE SCHOLARSHIP):
TO WHAT EXTENT PSYCHEDELICS IN RELIGIOUS HISTORY?

There are various ways to define the scope of such questions.

There are variant Q’s, w/ broad or narrow scoping:

  • To what extent psychedelics in religious history?
  • To what extent did religious myth serve as analogies describing eternalism-driven control-transformation in religious history?
  • Is religion legit when, in places & times, it failed to be analogies describing eternalism-driven control-transformation?
  • Are brands of Transcendent Knowledge bogus and lower, exoteric reductions that perpetuate deluded possibilism-thinking, when they fail to be analogies describing psychedelic eternalism-driven control-transformation?
  • To what extent psilocybin mushrooms in earliest Xn history?
  • When was the peak of using psilocybin mushrooms in Medieval Xy – or, Medieval Europe?

/ end of mh interjection

Desc con’t:

Psychedelic History

“Why is improvement to the empirical and theoretical rigour of psychedelic history resisted rather than welcomed?

“Why accept a swath of self-serving speculation drawn from the humanities, and then insist on resisting critical analysis?”

/ end of video’s Desc

Who is she pushing against: Muraresku specifically? It’s the history of her rejected article, rejected by both camps of journals:

  • Extremist entheogen scholars pushing maximal entheogen theory of religion (eg Brown 2019 lists first, Michael Hoffman of Egodeath.com)
  • Extremist ABD Apologists: Anything But Drugs is to be considered a “reasonable” and “evidenced” cause of the intense mystic altered state.

I have her referenced article. I know it, have it, have read it.

Pop social drama narrative of Secret Christian Amanita Cult? the Secret Amanita paradigm? Or ergot equiv of that.

Motivation for this Page

I’ve been activated by Mosur’s atrocious, intensely offensive written desc of her talk.

Need transcription of the actual talk, to see in what way she vigorously backpedals during her talk.

What exactly are her positive recommendations for entheogen scholarship? Do they amount to anything of substance?

Mosurinjohn Doggedly 🐶 Pursues Her Mirage 👻 of Non-Drug Entheogens, Committing Myopic Indigenous Shams propaganda against presence of psychedelics in non-Sham’ic religious history

Crop by Michael Hoffman
On left, R thumb (non-branching) holds {lifted garment}; pairs of hands below: YI (thumb & fingers) above, & Y (fingers, no thumb) below. 11:19 p.m. January 19, 2026

Hold branch in L hand.

Need a name / label / symbol for “one hand fingers no thumb; and other hand thumb as well as fingers”. Y + YI. The YI Hand shape, plus fingers-only:

{fingers only vs. fingers & thumb}
fft

On left, R thumb (non-branching) holds {lifted garment};
pairs of hands below:
YI (thumb & fingers) above, &
Y (fingers, no thumb) below.
11:19 p.m. January 19, 2026

It’s puzzling why this set of conference videos (including one of my colleagues), are at the channel “Harvard Law School Program on Jewish & Israeli Law“. Half the talks in the conference/set are not Jewish.

Transcription

“Search for pre-Christian origins.

What happens when that search for origins focuses on the finding of the drug and the phenomenology of the drug as the way to find the drug?

I’m talking about the claim that the Eleusinian mysteries were psychedelic, as claimed by Carl Ruck & authors in the Road to Eleusis 1978 and revitalized as my colleague Dr. [Richard Ascough] mentioned in Brian Murarescu’s The Immortality Key in 2020.

[did Richard Ascough talk at this conference? Not mentioned in schedule. -mh]

These books attempt to shed light on the enigmatic rituals of the elusinian mysteries.

They argue that the consumption of a psychoactive substance played a pivotal role in the rituals which dramatized Persephone’s underworld death rebirth journey nested in the cosmic fractal cycles of destruction and creation.

These books are really popular, and they’re very mainstream, and they’re almost totally ignored by scholars.

I’m going to draw out something important about this reception and response history.

Let me detail it a little bit.

Until a couple of weeks ago, in response to The Immortality Key, for instance, I was only aware of one great paper, and the fact that both Dr. Charles Stang and I both independently presented papers on it in the summer of 2023.

Mine was with my colleague Dr. Richard Ascoff.

Dr. Stang’s excellent essay is now published in Harvard Theological Review …

Web search:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Charles+Stang%27s+%22Harvard+Theological+Review%22
Web search:
“Psychedelic Futures and Altered States in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean”
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Psychedelic+Futures+and+Altered+States+in+the+Religions+of+the+Ancient+Mediterranean%22
Sharday’s article’s References section has 1 entry for Stang:

Psychedelic Futures and Altered States in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean
Charles Stang
December 31, 2024
Harvard Theological Review
Published online by Cambridge University Press.

I have Stang’s entire article. -mh]

Shar con’t:

There also recently appeared a new piece in Reason magazine.

Otherwise, this psychedelic mysteries hypothesis [Ascough’s term] was not being engaged in religious studies.

[See https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/site-map/ – Find “mura”, “ruck”]

There is some work [scholarly critique] on Road to Eleusis.

Not a lot, but I saw the claim that “the ancient mysteries were psychedelic” constantly repeated at psychedelic conferences.

I saw it especially on the slide of the presentations that gave the cultural historical background.

Particularly the psychedelic science [~= Tim Leary-type psychometric q’airs] presentations included this [such a] slide. [saying “the ancient mysteries were psychedelic”]

There would be the bas relief of Demeter handing Persephone a mushroom.

Apparently, the alleged mushroom.

Seeing this all over the place [the claim that “the ancient mysteries were psychedelic”], I wanted…

Having colleagues always coming up to me going

“Did you know — you’re in religion; you’re a religious studies scholar —

“Did you know that the ancient mysteries were psychedelic?”

There’s not evidence for this.

Sharday Unable to Get Either Type of Journal to Publish Her Critique: Journals Affirming or Denying Psychedelics in Religious History

So I thought,

“Let me put this piece in a psychedelic science journal to speak particularly to that crowd.”

Possibly Rejected by the Journal of Psychedelic Studies​ (M. Wink.) probably

The psychedelic science journal did not want to critique Ruck and Wasson and Hofmann.

[It] seemed [to me they’re reluctant] to undermine some of the bedrock on which rests the popularization of psychedelics and

the dignification of psychedelics as old and religiously serious, and

on which therefore rest certain arguments for the legalization of psychedelics.

Religious Studies Journal Rejected Her Critique Article: Journal Allergic to Psychedelics

After a year of back and forth, we tried to publish it [citation? of her conf presentation above, not found yet? mh] in a religious studies journal that after another year turned out didn’t want to touch psychedelics.

This publication non-history, or non-publication history, is emblematic of a larger problem.

Larger Problem: Isolation and Separation of Academic Scholarship vs. Popular Scholarship, produced the False Lie and Blundering Error, the “psychedelic mysteries” Pseudo-Fact

The siloing of academic disciplines and academia from popular discourse means that sometimes an idea gets picked up like the “psychedelic mysteries” claim from a classicist, and then it gets repeated in another discipline, such as psychedelic science work, but it’s then insulated from getting evolved by interdisciplinary critique.

Scholarship Should Evolve by Communication FROM Academic True Scholarship, TO Popular Reception of Correction

The contribution that I want to make [having entered the field 5 minutes ago and seeing a self-promotion and instant leadership opportunity for myself -mh] is towards supporting:

the discussion of psychedelics coming into mainstream culture on sound historical footing
and to emphasize drawing on
sophisticated frameworks for working with the psychedelic experience
rather than
the finding of the drug, and the phenomenology of the drug.

Change from Looking for Which Plant (Based on Phenomenology of Your Trips); Instead

She Said “Positionality”

I want to foreground the importance of
scholars bringing our subjectivity to the claims that we are making –
which for all of
the talk of positionality becoming de riguer during the academy,
it’s not exactly often that academia trains us to make a practice of
inventorying what we’ve disowned and avoided knowing about ourselves and projected onto others or the past
and so on in order to continually
come into integrity around what we’re doing.

[you entered the field 5 minutes ago, haven’t read the published evidence, and presume to lecture others about proper scholarship. Proper scholarship is good, but bully in a china shop
I need to find her unpublishable article to clarify her recommendations for changing how entheogen scholarship, or psychedelic science, is done – mh]

But our work is deeply served by inquiring into what our “come from” is with it.

What stands out for me with the psychedelic mysteries hypothesis is the strength of the desire to have
a western civilizational pedigree
to dignify the use of stigmatized drugs.

[she’s not representing my scholarship, theorizing, and motivations -mh]

Other psychedelic histories [?] don’t seem to do it. [???]

She Pontificates on Non-Drug Psychedelics (Academia-Approved)

Other non-drug modes of changing consciousness.

The Eleusist discourse is very focused on mushrooms [differentiate Ama vs. Psilo -mh] and acid [sic; ergot, or LSA] and
aligning with an older and truer religion.

Now the “come from” [above] is an understandable defense against anti-drug attitudes.

There’s a case
by appealing to ancient authority
speaking back to anti-drug authority today saying:

“Drugs aren’t going to fry my brain, they shouldn’t be illegal.
“Real religion is about drugs and it feels ecstatic and
you’ve kept the good stuff from me and now I’m going to take it back.”

Drugs aren’t going to fry my brain; they shouldn’t be illegal. Real religion is about drugs, and it feels ecstatic, and you’ve kept the good stuff from me, and now I’m going to take it back.”

Sharday, in a moment of clarity of thought and expression

Understand me:

There is nothing wrong with looking to the past and wanting to know what is there.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to inquire about Western psychedelic histories.
[5:45] 5*60 + 45 = 345s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k858spSK-bQ&t=345s [5:45]

[in contrast, see her written description of the talk, from the conference schedule, where she rudely attacks and dictates what scholars are permitted to investigate
https://www.psychedelicsandreligion.info/schedule
— copied to below -mh]

That’s valuable.

The growth edge in this psychedelic mysteries discourse is
instead of appealing to ancient authorities
to create a normative landscape that can hold
rather than wage war on psychedelics
to become grounded in and advocating for one’s own experiences and values and practices.
[as long as they center on Indig Shams, and are limited to that -mh]

This critique is not a dismissal of the inquiry into ancient psychedelics

[but quote her writeup of the talk, where she dismisses and forbids and demonizes inquiry into ancient psychedelics -mh]

, but as being about what to emphasize, and the importance of a grounded centered “come from” to integrate toward.

[newcomer to field dictates what we have to emphasize -mh]

What happens when we focus on finding the drug in history and finding that drug through a phenomenological comparison of “this is what I think this drug felt like to me now” and “this description in an ancient text sounds like what I felt like and so therefore that’s probably this drug”.

[I rail against overemph of Amanita directly at the expense of Psilocybin.

Irvin commits that bad move:
The Holy Mushroom: Evidence of Mushrooms in Judeo-Christianity (Jan Irvin, 2008) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1439215170
-mh]

When that happens, it means that it focuses on
[BAD:]
the task of that finding [ie which plant] and
the phenomenology that authorizes the linkage,
rather than
a program of creative work for taking up an injunction in the psychedelic space
from spirit,
from the divine,
from the higher truth,
from personal and human potential,
from a deeper level of consciousness;
however you model it.

This is a matter of emphasis, not a dismissal of studying phenomenology.

[phenomenology? I thought the dispute is whether it’s ok for scholars to look for entheogens in relig history -mh]

[Her field-changing revolutionary advice:
don’t emphasize “which plant“;
don’t emphasize “what phenomenology effects?”;
instead, emphasize:
“creative work for taking up an injunction in the psychedelic space from [the transcendent;
the work that you do once the drug gets you into a state.
-mh]

[Ruck says: Gnosis is the Amanita.
I say: gnosis is psilocybin 10x, giving eternalism-driven control-transformation, adding the eternalism POV to the possibilism POV. -mh]

I’m talking about what happens when a discourse focuses on the drug per se, rather than what is the work that you do once it gets you into a state.

[She’s scrambling, thrashing around looking for something to correct you on. The work is 10 psilocybin sessions, adding eternalism-thinking to possibilism-thinking. -mh]

How do we model the parameters and the ends of spiritual evolution of God waking up in form of connecting with the fundamental waveform of the universe that might be best described in human terms as love.

[wtf are you even on about? relational mysticism instead of positive unitive model? -mh]

Thank you Jim Fatiman for that amazing phrase.

However you model that work.

[Mosur chastises Ruck and Muraresku:
instead of looking for which plant, based on which phenomenology
(eg eternalism-driven control-transformation?),
you should instead model the work.
See the closest Ruck & M. Hoffman comes: book:
Entheogens, Myth & Human Consciousness. -mh]

How this plays out in Road to Eleusis, for example, is that the authors present a case for the use of ergot ritually drunk at the ceremony to peak at the climax of the hierophants’ drama.

Wasson, Hofmann, and Ruck write that given the size of the audience (thousands) and their reactions, it quote “seems obvious that an hallucinogen must have induced it”, end quote.

This sort of thing is repeated frequently throughout the book.

They make this assumption based on
their interpretation of
the phenomenology of psychedelics,
specifically of ergot, which is a source of LSD precursors, but which they assume felt like a mushroom trip.

[Sharday says: Ruck is bad for having mushroom/ acid journey, then using his phenomenology to try to identify which plant in ancient mystery religions. -mh]

Wasson writes “I am certain that this word ‘ecstasy’ came into being to describe the effect of the mystery of Eleusis. Can you find a better word than that to describe the be mushroomed state?”

We have this claim that experiences described in the ancient texts (which are few) obviously fit with modern psychedelic experiences, and the focus is on finding the drug by using the phenomenology.

The Problem Is: Underwriting?

The problem is that it’s underwriting a cultural container for psychedelic practice being forwarded through biomedical therapeutic mainstreaming by gesturing to an uncertain history based on a phenomenological comparison and circumstantial evidence, absent of modeling of the gnosis and the practical modeling of the processes for working with it.

Sharday, Expert in Modelling Gnosis and the Processes for Working with Gnosis

See her article in which she supposely models Gnosis, and models the processes for working with Gnosis.

[Ruck & Hoffman try that, sort of, in the book Entheogens, Myth & Human Consciousness, but I couldn’t find anything about consciousness in that book.

Probably its content is invisible on my radar because Ruck & Hoffman probably use the positive unitive model of “mystical experience” (Popular Neo-Advaita), which is nothing to me, compared to eternalism-driven control-transformation to add the eternalism POV to the possibilism POV. – mh]

Model the Integrating of Gnosis into Daily Life

Shar con’t:

Integrating the eternal potential into the temporal manifest of daily life.

In this space, some philosophers have attempted to introduce secular resources for this modeling, such as Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes’ “metaphysical matrix”.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Peter+Hughes+metaphysical+matrix

Video title:
Dr. Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes – ‘Metaphysics and Psychedelics’ (The MIND Philosophy Series #3)
June 21, 2022
Channel:
MIND Foundation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ6UDyF4KWo —

Vid desc: “Psychedelics can occasion intense #metaphysical experiences – are such shifts delusional, or might they carry an element of truth?

“Continuing our Philosophy Series, Dr. Sjöstedt-Hughes, research fellow and associate lecturer at the University of Exeter (UK), will speak of how we might:

Make sense of such [psychedelic] experiences by critically framing them through several rational metaphysical systems.”

Shar [EXPERT IN MODELLING EXPERIENCES, OF EVIL & SUFFERING] con’t:

I’ve tried to do something similar with modeling experiences, particularly of evil and suffering, which appeared in this wonderful collection that came out of last year’s CSWR “Psychedelic Intersections” conference.

search web:
Center for Studies World Religion “Psychedelic Intersections” conference
https://www.google.com/search?q=Center+for+Studies+World+Religion+%22Psychedelic+Intersections%22+conference
Then find Mosurinjohn.

Shar con’t:

What frames
the West’s cultural historical resources for psychedelic practice,
is
an attempt to authorize it by
finding drugs in the past
by way of phenomenological identification.

Those coming to psychedelics through this route are learning form over content.

What they really need is bodybuilding for the disclosure, and to know that the divine disclosure is not one ceremony in the Telesterion.

It is a lifetime of successive increasingly subtle deepening.

[cliche: “Is enlightenment in a pill, or not?”
Complete initiation, actual “complete mystical experience”, is 10 psilocybin sessions, producing eternalism-driven control-transformation, adding the eternalism POV to the possibilism POV.
Been developing & deepening this explanatory model since 1988-2026. -mh]

Thank you.

[Applause]

[we’re being incoherently chastised and lectured by a newbie who hasn’t read the basic literature in the field, fishing around for some sort of appearance of correcting the field. What are the executive takeaways: none?

  • “Learn form over content.”
  • “Stop looking for plants based on phenomenology.”]

This is not all academic hot air without useful, actionable substance.

Conference Schedule

https://www.psychedelicsandreligion.info/schedule

Her Outrageous Written Description/Summary of Her Talk

Her written desc of the talk, from conf schedule, where she rudely attacks and dictates what scholars are permitted to investigate.

https://www.psychedelicsandreligion.info/schedule —

Sharday Mosurinjohn, The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences

“This talk responds to the idea that the ancient Eleusynian Mysteries were psychedelic, as claimed by Carl Ruck and co-authors in The Road to Eleusis (1978), revitalized by Brian Muraresku’s The Immortality Key (2020), and popularized by the Overton window-widening Joe Rogan.

“It [the talk] begins by
exposing critical methodological flaws in the arguments,
namely,
a pattern of presenting claims, followed by mild circumstantial evidence, and then rhetorically solidifying the interpretation of this evidence into a “fact,” on which is built each subsequent round of conjecture.

“In The Road To Eleusis, a speculation like “It seems obvious that an hallucinogen must have induced it” (2008: 47) immediately furnishes the next premise “To identify the Eleusynian drug…” (2008: 47) that begins the following paragraph.

ANY SCHOLAR WHO LOOKS FOR PSYCHEDELICS IN RELIGIOUS HISTORY (OTHER THAN INDIG SHAMS) IS “These writers’ dogged pursuit of evidentiary mirages” – PLEASE SCREAM “I’M IGNORANT, VAGUE, MYOPIC, AND MEAN” LOUDER

“I argue that
these writers’ dogged pursuit of evidentiary mirages

[unprofessional, rude, rhetoric, ignorant jerk; rude & wrong are married forever, deserving each other -mh]

has to do with wanting
a western civilizational pedigree
to dignify the use of stigmatized drugs.

[is that so? is that the motive of 2nd-generation entheogen scholarship (the Explicit Psilocybin paradigm: Samorini, Michael Hoffman [theorist of eternalism-driven control-transformation], & Browns? -mh]

This myopia is rooted in colonial violence

🤦‍♂️ 🤦‍♂️ 🤦‍♂️ 🤦‍♂️

that precludes seriously relating to [??? do you not know that the same entheogen scholars covering Europe covered Americas? WTF does that even mean, “precludes seriously relating to”?? -mh] the many well-documented Indigenous histories of psychedelics, [far back as 100 years!]

Another Plug for non-drug entheogens, As Ever, by Fake, Posturing Academics

ABD Apologists: Anything But Drugs is to be considered a “reasonable” and “evidenced” cause of the intense mystic altered state

Shar con’t, in writing:

“as well as a sort of functional fixedness that
prevents
seeing contemporary psychedelic practice in continuity with other, and maybe even older, non-pharmacological methods of changing consciousness.”

[Shar args: If you are a dog, pursuing evidence that is known to certainly be a mirage, then you cannot perceive current psychedelics use “in continuity with” older, original, non-drug methods of entering the psychedelic state. -mh]

Shardog the female dog of a scholar, doggedly continues in her evidentiary mirage hallucinating non-drug psychedelics in religious history:

I conclude that, given how
the psychedelic hypothesis is fundamentally flawed in its study of antiquity, it is a shaky foundation on which to build an argument for modern psychedelic use for therapeutic and spiritual practice.

Her Paper Was Rejected Again

I also report on the multi-year history of
the rejection of the manuscript on which this talk is based
as it is emblematic of
the way
popular audiences and scholars fail to communicate around psychedelic history and culture,
even as psychedelic bioscience scholarship is at the centre of today’s social mainstreaming.”

[by “communicate” she means, scholars – of her persuasion – to pop audience? 1-way?]

Psychedelic Bioscience Scholarship (ie, psychedelic pseudo science founded on ultra-narrowing, Popular Neo-Advaita)

[translation: psychedelic pseudo science, using Leary’s psychometrics q’airs, with Popular Neo-Advaita — extremely eliminative narrowing of what’s “real mysticism” — baked-in as the “science foundation”]

/ end of Shar Mos’s written summary of the talk

[How is the psychedelic [mysteries] hypothesis “fundamentally flawed in its study of antiquity” – fundamentally flawed, in what sense? See her mystery article. -mh]

Self-Contradictory Flip-Flop: “Euro Entheogen Scholarship is False and Foolish, but I’m Not Saying Euro Entheogen Scholarship Is False and Foolish”

Self-contradictory, Mosur’s article Abstract saying you’re not allowed to do entheogen scholarship other than centered around and limited to Indig Shams, because there is no evidence (of any kind) for any other psychedelics history – she backpedals and contradicts that in her talk.

She bluffs as if we “misheard” her Abstract, her demonization and ridiculing of entheogen scholarship except for on Indigenous Shams.

You can tell, from her defense in her talk: entheogen scholars hate her article, and called her on her “absence of evidence is evidence of absence” fallacy. The old flip flop, I’ve seen it before, in Andy Letcher, see my review of Shroom:

“We don’t know entheogen history for a fact.”
<- flip/flop->
“We know for certain it wasn’t drugs.”

“ONLY IF WE LOOK CLOSELY DO WE FIND SOMETHING DIFFERENT”
– That’s an important pattern, eg Mosur wrote (in the Abstract of the 2025 article Psychedelics, Eleusis, and the Invention of Religious Experience, copied into the conference schedule):

“My talk is about: You must not do research in Euro history of psychedelics in Euro religious history, else guilty of Colonialist Violence;

“you are only permitted to focus on Indig Shams and make that your boundary of thought.

I suspect she’d ok Jewish , just not Xn — she, like John Lash, is trying to prohibit Xn history (specifically Mr. Jesus; Mr. Moses, Mr. Paul) from having psychedelics.

But in her actual talk [= more detail, more precise], Mosur. defensively backtracks from that f*cking obnoxious, outrageous dictate.

Every entheogen scholar hates her crummy, namecalling, insulting article.

She can’t retract the wording on the conf sched b/c its a copy of the article’s Abstract, which she can’t change.

She ATTACKS and INSULTS the entire field of entheogen scholarship, and I can tell that other entheogen scholars were as offended as me.

She tries to tell the same self-assured narrative in her talk, but, she’s intensely defensive, and denies smearing the entire entheogen scholarship field.

I have sound criticisms of entheogen scholarship and its contradictions.

The journals wouldn’t publish her article: neither the Journal of Psychedelic Studies​ (I’m guessing), nor a Religious Studies journal.

Mosurinjohn = authoritarian dictator, projection, colonialist-type violence, bossing around ppl in the field for which she hasn’t read the basic articles, and entered 5 minutes ago.

She wrote a hundred articles over decades, and a week ago comes into entheogen scholarship for the first time, immediately throwing punches, strutting around, dictating “you can’t study entheogens in Euro history, b/c you are a Colonialist Violence against Indig Shams by not making your world revolve around alien Shams.”

Giving vague recommendations: Instead of looking for which plant, based on your phenomenology experience effects, you should instead [academic bafflegab] … attend to the “spiritual work”.

Her recomm for how to conduct entheogen scholarship is pretty empty of meaning; escapes into POSTURING AND ABSTRACTION.

Reactionary Against Newbie Bully Sharday Mosurinjohn Dictating What We Are Permitted to Study

Correct reaction against Mosur:

F*CK INDIGENOUS SHAMS (Mexico psilocybin; Amazon Aya), THEY ARE LOWER, CRUDE RELIGION; EURO HISTORY IS HIGHER, PROPER Transcendent Knowledge.

INDIG SHAMS HISTORY IS WORTHLESS; EURO ENTHEOGEN HISTORY IS WHAT IS WORTHWHILE TO STUDY.

p. 389 Baier: “For him [Frits Staal] South Asiatic mystic religions are not irrational but quite rational explorations of mystical experience that foreshadow a holistic scientific psychology”

Like saying “Popular Neo-Advaita is bunk, insane, and irrational, but Ken Wilber’s ultra sophisticated Advaita is REAL Advaita; Popular Neo-Advaita doesn’t count”.

I reject that. What ruined psychedelic science is mostly Popular Neo-Advaita: “You must stop thinking; cease constructing the self-other boundary; that’s what Transcendent Knowledge is all about.”

Transcendent Knowledge is actually all about, centrally, the process of mental model transformation from possibilism to eternalism (ie to integrated possibilism/eternalism thinking).

The pop, avoidance tactic is take fav 1% of mystical experience (positive unitive), and declare that to be the entirety of mystical experience thus rejecting and discarding 99% of mystical experience.

The all-dominant model of mystical experience (positive unitive model) is so wrong, to this extent: it’s a model selectively based on just 1% of a thing, pretending to be the entire thing. The result is not merely “wrong emphasis”; the result is entirely false, wrong, misrepresentative FUNDAMENTALLY.

Mystical experience is NOT about positive unitive; actually, mystical experience is about eternalism-driven control-transformation.

I refuse to grant any high, ultimate, central focus to “positive unitive realization”, when ALL the action is re: the eternalism-driven control-transformation process.

The positive unitive model is nothing but an avoidance tactic and popular sales.

re: Reactionary against Indig Shams propaganda, see:

Mosur Elevates Presupposed Non-Drug Methods of the Mystics “can/ could/ might/may” Produce Psychedelic Effects, As Every Academic Does

To absolute hell with “fasting, breathing, sens dep” – this is sheer agenda-driven posturing and buttheadedness; ABD Apologists: Anything But Drugs is to be considered a “reasonable” and “evidenced” cause of the intense mystic altered state.

My challenge: PLEASE DEMONSTRATE how other methods work to “can/ could/ might/ may” produce the same effect as psychedelics.

Starving = 10 g of Cubensis? Sheer bull sh!t & self-righteous posturing. A tired, cliche argument, very worn out.

Ruck’s symbolic-only entheogens; Hanegraaff’s non-drug entheogens.

The left statue is modern, AI gen’d? Fails to fit classical style:

https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/v2/D5622AQE7F_yNnZ5JXw/feedshare-shrink_1280/B56Ziepa.NG4Ak-/0/1755008316079?e=2147483647&v=beta&t=OsVF3I503xqWjikQBKQbdQyIFT_qTkNuRDC2uxpAr2s

Henry Winslow’s Motte & Bailey Sleazy Strategy: “There’s No Evidence” = “Been Debunked”

After I showed the fallacious arg’n in
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/ —

I have no respect for deniers of the entheogen theory of religion.

Their arguments are fallacious, and posturing to ingratiate themselves with the butthead committed skeptics in academia, who say chanting and watching drama is likely to produce mystery religion intense mystic altered state.

The ABD Apologists say that asserting that “the intense mystic altered state in mystery religion required psychedelics” is “unreasonable” and has “no evidence” and “debunked”.

What do you think of the articles by Samorini 1997, 1998, & Ruck 2001 “Conjuring Eden”? Oh, you haven’t read them – you only are aware of 1st-generation entheogen scholarship.

But you know “There is no evidence.”

Cheap reasoning, lazy scholarship. Establishment-compliant propaganda by professional academics – who retain their “competent scholar” status by their affiliation proclamations:

“I solemnly swear, I disavow Allegro’s theory, that psychedelics had a major role in European religious history. Please don’t kick me out of the club of competent scholars.”

The deniers propose intense mystic altered state through fasting. They say that’s a more sensible explanation than psychedelics. A really weak position, they have.

I’ll gladly bet on and commit to the entheogen hypothesis ANY DAY, just like I’m glad to own the Psilocybin hypothesis of what was the engine of the mystery religions, & mixed wine.

You can have your 3rd rate, Amanita single-drug fallacy.

And fasting to produce the full, transformative psychedelic effect – you can have that solution, and the hyperventilation method, while I’m stuck just owning Psilocybin as the explanation.

Henry Winslow really likes and repeats the very worst arg’n from Sharday Mosurinjohn.

It’s false “there’s no evidence”.

No evidence, for what, precisely?

Absense of evidence is not evidence of absense.

The post is rotten arg’n and POSTURING and bluffing; RHETORIC of the butthead ABD Apologists: Anything But Drugs is to be considered a “reasonable” and “evidenced” cause of the intense mystic altered state.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/henrywins_what-do-joe-rogan-a-freshly-minted-neoshaman-activity-7361038406467948546-63ak —

Henry Winslow posted:

“What do Joe Rogan, a freshly minted neoshaman, and half the speakers at psychedelic conferences have in common?

“They all love telling people that the ancient Greeks’ rites of passage were psychedelic ceremonies.

“According to this popular theory, the secret sauce behind the legendary Eleusinian Mysteries was ergot-laced barley that sent initiates on revelatory, near-death-like psychedelic journeys. But is it even true?”

[is what true: how much evidence we have? whether psychedelics were used? do we know the fact of that? do we know for certain that Eleusis was NOT psychedelics? according to this sleazy wording, acts as if “yes, we know Eleusis was not psychedelics”.

Henry Winslow LAPS UP THE SWILL, BAD ARG’N (Motte & Bailey flip-flop of exactly what’s being asserted], SHARDAY DISHES OUT.]

—

“Researchers from Queen’s University think not. [YOU MEAN, THEY POSTURE AGAINST ENTHEOGEN SCHOLARSHIP, TO INGRATIATE ESTABLISHMENT. THEY DO NOT IN FACT SAY “WE KNOW KYKEON WANS’T PSYCHEDELICS”]

WORLD’S SLEAZIEST WRITING (Sheer Propaganda): “a thorough takedown of the whole theory”

There’s pushback in comments, even glad to see accusation of Henry Winslow’s camp “posturing”.

Note the weasel wording: “a takedown”.

Henry Winslow didn’t say “proved kykeon wasn’t psychedelics”. He vaguely said “a takedown” of “the theory” — which theory, precisely?

This is a con artist shell game via vague, elastic use of language. This is rhetoric, posturing, propaganda:

“So they just dropped a thorough takedown of the whole theory in the journal Psychedelic Medicine. “

What does “dismantle” mean? This is not precise determinate language!

That style of writing is highly suspect; internet flame war mode, not factual debate. “Destroyed by facts and logic!“

“Drs. Sharday Mosurinjohn (whom I interviewed in April) and Richard Ascough systematically dismantle what they call “the psychedelic mysteries hypothesis,” pointing out there’s zero archaeological evidence for psychedelics at Eleusis. “

Sharday markets herself as “Proving no psychedelics in Euro history”, but when pinned down, she claims “I’m merely pointing out that it’s a hypothesis, not proved.”

Letcher/Mosurinjohn: “We Don’t Have Evidence” = “We Know Entheogen Scholarship Is False”

“Absence of Evidence Is Evidence of Absence.”

Sharday’s arg’n paraphrased; posturing, Motte and Bailey, flip-flop, moving the goalposts arg’n:

  • “I totally disproved the psychedelic hypothesis, we now know psychedelics did not have a major role in religious history.
  • My point is, the entheogen theory of religion is not proved, but a hypothesis.
  • How can ppl be so stupid as to assert what we definitely know to be false.
  • I disproved psychedelics’ role in religious history.
  • I’m merely cautioning you scholars [after having entered the field 5 minutes ago, and seeing self-promotional opportunities in this field] we must differentiate hypothesis vs. proved fact.
  • Thus I have proved, no psychedelics in European history.

Henry Winslow continues his Motte and Bailey fallacious arg’n game:

“They say proponents are presenting speculation as fact, and the entire narrative is built on shaky foundations and circular reasoning.”

[these are typical, weak, ineffectual objections, as discussed in Phil & Hist o Sci -mh]

“So why does the myth persist?”

This is fallacious and vague writing, “the myth”. Vague.

What aspect of the hypothetis is “the myth”, here?

Are you claiming that we know for a fact, ppl at Eleusis tripped out without using psychedelics?

Henry Winslow SOUNDS like he’s claiming that, when he says, with Sharday, “Why does the myth persist?”

Didn’t sharday write same words? he interv’d her.

Henry Winslow con’t: [this is practically a quote from Sharday:]

“The authors argue it’s about legitimacy.

“People want to believe there’s a ‘respectable’ Western pedigree for psychedelics with our European ancestors. “

Next, he repeats the arg, “European not allowed to have entheogen history; scholars must worship Indig Shams else guilty of Colonial Violence”:

Henry Winslow con’t:

“Never mind that there are plenty of Indigenous lineages around the world that have preserved psychedelic wisdom for millennia.

“If we need history’s stamp of approval to justify research and policy reform today (we don’t), surely that’s enough.”

Who says our goal is “to justify research and policy reform”? That’s part of it, but “YOU ARE WRONG AND UNETHICAL TO LOOK FOR PSYCHEDELICS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY” – STFU

ABD Apologists: Anything But Drugs is to be considered a “reasonable” and “evidenced” cause of the intense mystic altered state.

Sharday’s Proclamation of What’s Good and Bad

Sharday Mosurinjohn. 2023 article, June 2025 article.

Begs for a Parody Article inverting her bad logic especially her super-bad logic in her summary of her 10-min talk at Jewish Harvard Law.

Haven’t figured out where the Jewish comes in, why the conference (not advertised as Jewish) has the video talks (including Christian) at the Jewish YouTube channel.

She args:

Good: Focusing on history of Indigenous Shams.

citation: Alan Houot 2019 masters thesis: shamans good, have full control on psilocybin; mystics bad; pursue loss of control & surrenderism. He strangely omitted this topic/argument from the 2025 book Rise of the Psychonaut.

Good: Focusing on history of entheogens in Jewish history (not directly asserted, but implied on some adjacent talks at the conf).

Bad: Focusing on Western, Christian history of entheogens, = colonialist violence, because fails to put the central focus on Indig Shams.

“IT’S AN EVIDENCED FACT THAT SHAMS HAVE LONG HISTORY OF LOFTY WISE SPIRITUAL RELIGIOUS USE OF PSILOCYBIN”

Sharday must be ignorant and uninformed of Safford’s authoritative 1915 article finding that there’s no psilocybin was used in Central America, but only peyote.
https://egodeaththeory.org/2024/12/12/aztec-narcotic-safford-1915/

cit: Jan Irvin’s 2022 book God’s Flesh: Teonanacátl: The True History of the Sacred Mushroom, August 2, 2022 https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Flesh-Teonanac%C3%A1tl-History-Mushroom/dp/0982556225/ & https://egodeaththeory.org/2023/03/27/gods-flesh-teonanacatl-the-true-history-of-the-sacred-mushroom-irvin-2022/

“IT’S AN ESTABLISHED SCHOLARLY FACT THAT GRECO-Christianity HAS NO EVIDENCE OF A HISTORY OF LOFTY WISE SPIRITUAL RELIGIOUS USE OF ENTHEOGENS”

SHAMS: ALL YOUR ENTHEOGEN ARE BELONG TO US.

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

Her article is cliche stereotypical anti-Christian.

cit/todo: finish reading Hatsis book Psychedelic Injustice.

f156 Spain: Dogged Pursuit of Deer with Branching Antlers

Crop by Michael Hoffman
“f156 Spain.jpg” 235 KB Dec. 28, 2024 7:01 pm
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10551125c/f156.item.zoom

Features:

  • Branching antlers of deer touch L, branching side of YI tree.
  • Hunting dogs to kill the deer are touching the {cut right trunk}.

Compare the reversible tauroctony: front: top: bull carried away looks in terror at snake at trunk of tree.

Dogs; Liberty Cap Roofs
https://www.kornbluthphoto.com/images/BernwardColumn_76.jpg
https://www.kornbluthphoto.com/BernwardColumn.html

See Also

pending

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Author: egodeaththeory

http://egodeath.com

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