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

Michael Hoffman 9:23 p.m. January 19, 2026
Scope/motivation: transcript of Mosurinjohn’s talk about the article.

Crops by Michael Hoffman

Contents:

Links work on desktop Edge/Chrome:

Article: Psychedelics, Eleusis, and the Invention of Religious Experience (Mosurinjohn & Ascough, Jul. 2025)

Psychedelics, Eleusis, and the Invention of Religious Experience
Sharday Mosurinjohn & Richard Ascough
July 2025
https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1177/28314425251361835

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).

10-minute talks.

My earlier, Aug. 2025 page I forgot about:
Psychedelics, Eleusis, and the Invention of Religious Experience (Mosurinjohn & Ascough, 2025)
https://egodeaththeory.org/2025/08/08/psychedelics-eleusis-and-the-invention-of-religious-experience-mosurinjohn-ascough-2025/

Abstract of “Invention” Article

Introduction

“This article corrects an idea in psychedelic science and culture that the ancient Eleusynian Mysteries used psychedelics, as claimed by Carl Ruck and co-authors in The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries (1978), revitalized by Brian Muraresku’s The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name (2020), and popularized by social media heavyweights such as Joe Rogan.

Methods

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

Analysis

“We then explore how the dogged pursuit of evidentiary mirages contributes to the project of establishing a western civilizational pedigree to dignify the use of stigmatized drugs and revitalize experiential religion.

Discussion

“Although the desire for legitimacy and meaning is understandable, the strategies used by the writers of this pseudo-history constitute a kind of religious fundamentalism.

“Their writing attempts to show that a relatively new practice is the old, true religion, in this case, the “religion with no name” that underlies every religious tradition.

“In doing so, they miss seriously relating to the many well-documented historical and living Indigenous histories of psychedelics, or seeing contemporary psychedelic practice in continuity with other, and maybe even older, nonpharmacological methods of changing consciousness.

“Overall, the “psychedelic Eleusis” discourse focuses on the purported Eleusynian drug and its phenomenology rather than focusing on practices for taking up the spiritual injunctions of those psychedelic experiences.

Conclusions

“We 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.

“Since scholarly research is key to moving forward decriminalization, legalization, medical regulation, and other roles for psychedelics in society, it is crucial that scholars and popular audiences communicate effectively around psychedelic history and culture.

“Instead of committing to a specific (and erroneous) view of history, psychedelic scholarship must commit to academic discussion and debate.”

My analysis and commentary is in a copy of this Abstract, or of the similar, Conference Schedule’s summary of the talk, below.

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

The obnoxious summary of the talk that’s in the Conference Schedule is mostly the same as the Abstract of the article.

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

https://www.psychedelicsandreligion.info/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)

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

Audio: The first minute is too quiet, it gets louder.

Video’s Description (Mosurinjohn’s Talk)

“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.

“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?”

Transcription of Video (Mosurinjohn’s Talk), No Commentary

Transcription of video of the talk “The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences” by Mosurinjohn 2025.

Cleaned up, formatted, and clarified by Michael Hoffman.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

So I thought,

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

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.

After a year of back and forth, we tried to publish it 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.

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.

The contribution that I want to make 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.

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.

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.

Other psychedelic histories don’t seem to do it.

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” is an understandable defense against anti-drug attitudes.

There’s a case making
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 good stuff from me, and now I’m going to take it back.”

Don’t mis-hear 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. 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.

So, hear this critique not as a dismissal of the inquiry into ancient psychedelics,

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

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“.

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

And so again, hear this as a matter of emphasis, not a dismissal of studying phenomenology.

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.

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.

Thank you Jim Fadiman for that amazing phrase.

However you model that work.

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.

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 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.

; 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”.

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.

My final remark is:

To the extent that
what frames the West’s cultural historical resources for psychedelic practice,
is an attempt to authorize it [psychedelic practice] 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.

Thank you.

[Applause]

/ end of transcription of video of the talk “The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences” by Mosurinjohn, 2025

Video: Psychedelics, and the Birth of Christianity – Dr. Richard Ascough (Dec. 2024)

Search YouTube for ascough psychedelic:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ascough+psychedelic

Search web for ascough psychedelic:
https://www.google.com/search?q=ascough+psychedelic

Video title:
Psychedelics, and the Birth of Christianity – Dr. Richard Ascough
Dec 25, 2024
Channel: Ayush Prakash
Ayush Prakash Podcast
This is episode 111.
Richard S. Ascough is Professor of Religion Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada.
The topic of psychedelics starts at 44:30:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8GcCjja74M&t=2670s [44:30] —

The idea of of synthesizing the ergot from mushrooms into an LSD type of substance, there’s just very weak basi– you know we can do it now, in highly technical labs, but could priests do it back then? Not saying they couldn’t, but I’m saying where’s– it’s conjecture, but it has to be proven.

48:21, Psychedelics, and the Birth of Christianity, [48:21] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8GcCjja74M&t=2901s

Flip, flop;
we know there was no psychedelics = we don’t have evidence for psychedelics;
Motte <–> Bailey <–> Motte <–> Bailey.

In characteristic entheogen denier fashion, Ascough shifts his position back and forth like Hopkins’ Buddha statue moving back and forth between the trip room and the closet (mystic Roland Griffiths vs. naturalist Matthew Johnson).

See new Ruck article:

Article: Investigating the psychedelic hypothesis of kykeon, the sacred elixir of the Eleusinian Mysteries (Ruck, Oct. 2025)

Investigating the psychedelic hypothesis of kykeon, the sacred elixir of the Eleusinian Mysteries
Oct. 2025
Ruck Committee
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/397335329_Investigating_the_psychedelic_hypothesis_of_kykeon_the_sacred_elixir_of_the_Eleusinian_Mysteries

Interview blog: Myth-busting psychedelics in ancient Greece: 5 Questions for religious studies professors Sharday Mosurinjohn and Richard Ascough (Hu, Sep. 2025)

Academic Indoctrination in Realtime: Ascough Prevents Mosurinjohn from Affirming Entheogen Scholarship

Title of blog post:
Myth-busting psychedelics in ancient Greece: 5 Questions for religious studies professors Sharday Mosurinjohn and Richard Ascough
The professors discuss the scant evidence for the idea that the Eleusinian Mysteries used psychedelics, and why it persists anyway.
Jane Hu, Sep. 15, 2025
https://themicrodose.substack.com/p/myth-busting-psychedelics-in-ancient

Transcription of “Sweetest Taboo” Video, with Commentary, Added Headings, and Citations of Works Mentioned

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

Audio: The first minute is too quiet, it gets louder.

Transcription of video of the talk “The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences” by Mosurinjohn, 2025

Cleaned up, formatted, and clarified by Michael Hoffman. Research on mentioned works; added headings; commentary, etc. by Michael Hoffman.

~~

[00:00]

“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 …

Psychedelic Futures and Altered States in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (Charles Stang, Dec. 2024)

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]

Transcription of video of the talk “The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences” by Mosurinjohn, 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

Transcription of video of the talk “The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences” by Mosurinjohn, con’t:

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

Transcription of video of the talk “The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences” by Mosurinjohn, con’t:

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

Transcription of video of the talk “The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences” by Mosurinjohn, con’t:

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

Transcription of video of the talk “The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences” by Mosurinjohn, con’t:

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

Transcription of video of the talk “The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences” by Mosurinjohn, con’t:

[I suspect Mosur of credentialism, authoritarianism, institutionalism: She likely imagines stupid pop scholars need to be informed by omniscient-like-her, academic authorities, in a strictly 1-way communication -mh]

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”

Transcription of video of the talk “The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences” by Mosurinjohn, con’t:

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)

Transcription of video of the talk “The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences” by Mosurinjohn, con’t:

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” is an understandable defense against anti-drug attitudes.

There’s a case making
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 good stuff from me, and now I’m going to take it back.”

Sharday, in a moment of clarity of thought and expression

Don’t mis-hear 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. That’s valuable.”

[5:45]

[She says the exact opposite of her bullying, cocky, pushy phrases in her Abstract.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k858spSK-bQ&t=345s [5:45]

TODO: QUOTE HER ARTICLE ABSTRACT, NOXIOUS PHRASES CONTRADICTING THAT. At top of present page, copypaste to here, the bold markup of best bad phrases, in the Abstract of the article and in the Conference Schedule’s description of her talk.]

Conference Schedule (extra link)

[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. We are not “mis-hearing” you; we are READING your Abstract ~= conf Schedule summary, which says exactly the opposite of what you’re now saying, now that your TEXT finished insulting entheogen scholars. Motte and Bailey arg’n; shifting what your position is, opportunitically, a shell game.

Like Andy Letcher’s book Shroom:
“No Secret Christian Amanita Cult, b/c the Liberty Cap(!) mushroom tree on Bern door is not hidden, as Stamets & Gartz in 1996 in typical fashion say [false; those mycologists wrote no such thing, only “matches Liberty Cap”];
Thus I have proved:
No mushrooms in W relig history.”
– mh]

Transcription of video of the talk “The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences” by Mosurinjohn, con’t:

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]

So, hear this critique not as 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]

Important: Have a Grounded, Centered, “Come-from” to Integrate Toward

Transcription of video of the talk “The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences” by Mosurinjohn, con’t:

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

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

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

[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]

Important: Do Creative Work for Taking up an Injunction in the Psychedelic Space from Spirit

[academic bafflegab meaning nothing – maybe after I read her article cover-to-cover the FOURTH time, I can translate this to STEM normal talk.

She talks about “need for communication” between smart academics and stupid pop audience – ie, from academic authorities of which she is the exemplar, to stupid pop audiences — yet she can’t communicate.

She hides her lack of substantive ideas, by needless academic bafflegab. -mh]

Transcription of video of the talk “The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences” by Mosurinjohn, con’t:

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

And so again, hear this as a matter of emphasis, not a dismissal of studying phenomenology. [eg how your trip felt, like ancient religion reports]

[phenomenology? I thought the dispute is whether it’s ok for scholars to look for particular entheogen plants in religious history –
shifts the topic of discussion -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]

Transcription of video of the talk “The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences” by Mosurinjohn, con’t:

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

[equivalent idea in the Egodeath theory:

I de-emphasize psychedelics themselves; it’s all about loose cognition; the loose cognitive state, and how the mental model of control is transformed from possibilism-thinking, to add eternalism-thinking.

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 Fadiman 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]

Transcription of video of the talk “The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences” by Mosurinjohn, con’t:

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.

[just texts? then, “evidence is few” —
Peak transformative experiences are also described by the best world religious mythology, and the best mythic art -mh]

The Problem Is, Underwriting a cultural container for psychedelic practice, via psychedelic science, historical uncertainty, based on experience descriptions, without modeling the processes for gnosis

Transcription of video of the talk “The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences” by Mosurinjohn, con’t:

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.

[Egodeath theory’s equivalent call for a change of focus:
Don’t focus on psychedelics themselves; or generic trip report effects;
model the mental model transformation process, from possibilism to eternalism; eternalism-driven control-transformation — and how myth and art depict that by analogies. -mh]

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

Transcription of video of the talk “The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences” by Mosurinjohn, 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”.

Transcription of video of the talk “The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences” by Mosurinjohn, con’t below the next section:

Video: Dr. Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes – ‘Metaphysics and Psychedelics’ (The MIND Philosophy Series #3) (Jun. 2022)

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.”

/ end of Desc from Sjöstedt-Hughes video

Modelling Experiences

Transcription of video of the talk “The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences” by Mosurinjohn, 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.

[“current year” = 2025; “last year” = 2024]

Transcription of video of the talk “The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences” by Mosurinjohn, con’t below the next section

Collection Including Modelling Experiences of Evil and Suffering: Center for the Study of World Religions’ “Psychedelic Intersections” conference

[Found the paper, seems relevant to the Egodeath theory.

Clearly relevant (sarcasm) — her previous 200 articles not about psychedelics, and her johhnny come lately discovery of Get Rich Quick opportunities in this newly reopened field.

So, 5 minutes ago, she started trying her hand at co-authoring articles with people, and trying to pose her totally NON psychedelic articles as if relevant to psychedelics -mh]

  1. Search web:
    “Center for the Study of World Religions” “Psychedelic Intersections” conference
    https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Center+for+the+Study+of+World+Religions%22+%22Psychedelic+Intersections%22+conference
  2. Find a “Mosurinjohn” webpage mentioning her Modelling Experiences of Evil and Suffering.

Alt try 2:

search web:
“Center for the Study of World Religions” “Psychedelic Intersections” conference Mosurinjohn 2024

might be it:
https://dash.harvard.edu/entities/publication/3d3ddf54-e092-419c-a61c-cb3800b05831 mentions article:
Toward a Psychedelic Theodicy: Psychedelic Biomedicine and the Concept of Risk

Toward a Psychedelic Theodicy: Psychedelic Biomedicine and the Concept of Risk (Mosurinjohn, 2024)

Paper, 7 pages, looks interesting for me: bad trip of evil demons & fear of God.

Search web for her title:
Toward a Psychedelic Theodicy: Psychedelic Biomedicine and the Concept of Risk
https://www.google.com/search?q=Toward+a+Psychedelic+Theodicy%3A+Psychedelic+Biomedicine+and+the+Concept+of+Risk
Read it as a webpage, or download as a PDF, at:
https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/publications/psychedelic-intersections/psychedelic-theodicy-mosurinjohn

Final Part of Her Talk

Transcription of video of the talk “The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences” by Mosurinjohn, con’t:

My final remark is:

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

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

[“form” [BAD] means:
identifying which drug in ancient texts or myths or images; and
doing that by matching current altered effects with past descriptions of experiences]

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

[She assumes entheogen scholars say,
“A single experience with a single drug, in antiquity, is what we must identify the plant for; then we have understanding.”]

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.

/ end of transcription of video of the talk “The Sweetest Taboo: Psychedelics and the Invention of Religious Experiences” by Mosurinjohn, with Commentary, Added Headings, and Citations of Works Mentioned

Video’s Short Description, with My Commentary (Mosurinjohn’s Talk)

“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:

“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 with my commentary

Summary of “Invention” Article (Liebert Inc., Aug. 5, 2025)

Summary:
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1093678
Aug. 5, 2025

In that 6-paragraph summary, watch out for “secret”, “suppress”, “hidden”, “key”, etc.

Delete all that junk, it prevents evidence & theory development.

The obsession with secret/suppressed, as we see well in Shroom by Letcher, ENTIRELY DERAILS what topic we’re even investigating. Letcher is under the delusion that we are investigating the narrow specific pop Secret Christian Amanita Cult theory.

Far more important is to investigate the broad, general question: the extent of psychedelics in history, including in Christendom. That in no way implies that the primary structure of the investigation, the #1 question:

  • Which groups had the Secret Amanita Gnosis?
  • Which groups lacked the Secret Amanita Gnosis?
  • Which groups suppressed the Secret Amanita Gnosis?

The mis-focus on “which groups” shuts out the far plainer question, more basic and elementary: did Christendom have psychedelics, or not? What are all types of evidence, and particular evidence of such types, for SHEER PRESENCE. Do not say per Ruck,

“Thank you for finding yet more evidence of SECRET psychedelic use by HERETICAL GROUPS.”

Ruck should instead halt at:

“Thank you for finding yet more evidence of psychedelic use by people within Christendom.”

People act like that speculation about “which groups” is a required, main part of theorizing — it’s not!

Delete the social drama narrative, and do scholarship instead; evidence + theorizing — sans made-up (to feed Popular Audience Demand) storytime speculation that’s not needed, and is unhelpful, and distracts the conversation in an irrelevant direction.

Got Nothing to Contribute, Not that Bright, and Don’t Feel Like Reading the Literature in the Field? Become an Entheogen Scholarship Critic, and Guide the Field

Pollan and Muraresku invaded the field suddenly, and were investments in astroturfed “overnight bestsellers”.

Now anyone feels they can invade the field, not read the bulk of the literature, and operate as a Wise Critic: On Easy Mode; just criticize The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku, 2020 – way easier than contributing to the field.

Greer doesn’t have to backpedal and contradict himself, b/c starts off w/ a balanced, nuanced stance – and hopefully isn’t promoting himself by denigrating everyone in a field he entered 5 minutes ago as Shar did.

Greer gives a better balanced arg’n than very lopsided denier Mosur – she has to catch up w/ Greer’s quality of arg’n in realtime.

Watch Mosur scramble to counter her article’s Abstract and her talk’s desc in the conf Schedule.

Direct self-contradiction, she’s scrambling in her talk: move those goalposts! “Motte! No, Bailey! No, Motte! No, Bailey!”

Greer doesn’t directly contradict himself / his Abstract like Mosur does.

Everyone was PISSED OFF at Shar’s POS lopsided, self-righteous, self-assured article sh*tting on the entire psychedelic mysteries hypothesis for self-promotion.

Can tell that by her self-contradiction during her talk; her defensiveness; her article being hated and rejected by all types of journals.

Greer: “my pal erik davis”, “a christ trip”. “This micro-tradition“

Insults; Self-Assured; Botches Basics: “Wasson Used Illegal Amanita”; Low Credibility Greer

Overconfident and biased, lopsided, oft clumsy loaded characterization. Histo article.

p. 281: “Wasson, Hofmann, and Ruck violated law and schol decorum and used Amanita” – face palm, there went all your credibility, Greer. Read a book.

Wasson, Hofmann, and Ruck violated law and schol decorum and used Amanita.

Xn Greer, newbie to the field

“The amateurs boldly go where no scholar has gone before, both intellectually and experientially.

“Wasson, Hofmann, and Ruck ([1978] 2008: 34) repudiated “armchair” scholarship and instead defied legal prohibitions and scholarly decorum by experimenting with Amanita muscaria themselves as a means of testing their hypotheses.

“They even went so far as demanding their detractors do the same before passing judgment on their arguments.”

F*CKING TERRIBLE WRITING!

A botched smear job by blundering Greer the Pop Sike zine contributor writing for the Pop Sike audience.

Greer’s Article about Amanita Being Illegal

https://www.academia.edu/129077372/Historians_on_Drugs_Towards_an_Empirical_Historiography_of_Global_Psychedelic_Cultures
Historians on Drugs: Towards an Empirical Historiography of Global Psychedelic Cultures
Christian Greer

2025, South Atlantic Quarterly

Religion,
Drugs And Addiction,
Psychedelics,
Global History,
Western Esotericism
https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-11626593

Abstract of Article “Historians on Drugs” (Greer)

“Scholarship on the global history of psychedelics is divided into two rival approaches.

“This article analyzes these approaches, emphasizing the way in which ideological biases on both sides have stymied serious research on the use of psychedelic substances across space and time, before introducing the empirical approach as an alternative.

“The most prevalent view, “pharmacological Calvinism,” essentializes mind‐altering drugs and their users as degenerate or antisocial.

“This reductive approach has defined the intellectual mainstream across academic disciplines to the present.

“In contrast to pharmacological Calvinism, the entheogenic school offers a maximalist interpretation of psychedelics’ impact on human culture and cognition, presenting consciousness‐expanding drugs as the “secret key” behind the world’s religious traditions, mythology, and folklore.

“This article proposes that the empirical approach offers a corrective to the overstatements of both schools,

“as it is defined by comparatively granular research that draws from a deep understanding of primary sources

“placed in conversation with the intellectual apparatuses of the secondary literature.

“Distinctly uninterested in unveiling psychedelics as the “key” to any tradition, this approach interprets the multiplicity of meanings and values associated with powerful psychotropics, alongside other modes of ecstasy and transpersonal relationality, as an integral dimension of the human story.”

Abstract of Article “Historians on Drugs” (Greer), with Commentary

“Scholarship on the global history of psychedelics is divided into two rival approaches.

“This article analyzes these approaches, emphasizing the way in which ideological biases on both sides have stymied serious research on the use of psychedelic substances across space and time, before introducing the empirical approach as an alternative.

“The most prevalent view, “pharmacological Calvinism,” essentializes mind‐altering drugs and their users as degenerate or antisocial.

“This reductive approach has defined the intellectual mainstream across academic disciplines to the present.

“In contrast to pharmacological Calvinism, the entheogenic school offers a maximalist interpretation of psychedelics’ impact on human culture and cognition, presenting consciousness‐expanding drugs as the “secret key” behind the world’s religious traditions, mythology, and folklore.

[every last one of ’em is OBSESSED by the secrecy/suppression social drama narrative (not Stamets/Gartz 1996, against Andy Letcher’s Shroom’s botched endnote 31), but the secrecy/suppression premise is actually distinct from the broad general proposal; don’t conflate.

In some ways, the Egodeath theory = the empirical approach, moderate middling way; theory-driven maximal entheogen theory of religion -mh]

“This article proposes that the empirical approach offers a corrective to the overstatements of both schools,

[fallacy of the middle

you need to prove it by throwing the Walburga tapestry in the river, like the perfect, reasonable middle-men, J & J Brown -mh]

“as it is defined by comparatively granular research that draws from a deep understanding of primary sources

[how about start by just reading Samorini 1997, Samorini 1998, & “Conjuring Eden”? not being completely unread in the field, for 2nd-generation entheogen scholarship (the Explicit Psilocybin paradigm). -mh]

“placed in conversation with the intellectual apparatuses of the secondary literature.

[d/k all this “key” business, — oh, I see: these latest batch of writers is pushing against The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku, 2020: playing the “entheogen scholarship critic, buy my book” game on Easy Mode. -mh]

“Distinctly uninterested in unveiling psychedelics as the “key” to any tradition, this approach interprets the multiplicity of meanings and values associated with powerful psychotropics, alongside other modes of ecstasy and transpersonal relationality, as an integral dimension of the human story.”

/ end of Abstract of Greer article

I sent to Greer at Academia, Jan. 20, 2026:

“Defining a middle way.

I have lots of intensive critique of entheogen scholars.

Entheogen scholarship needs internal critique from within the field.

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

The field of psychedelic science needs internal critique from within the field.

This psychedelic pseudo science incorp’s the 1893/1960, ultra narrow (eliminative, reductionist), Popular Neo-Advaita, positive unitive model of “mystical experience”.

Breau 2023 adds negative unitive experience, but is stuck within the 1893/1960 bubble still.

Taves 2020 is broader, at least nominally: she remains stuck within the narrow “mysticism = unitive” bubble, but calls to broaden the field from only Unitive effects, to “altered sense of self”.

/ end of msg to Greer

Bully Opportunism

Sharday is a bully/opportunist version of Greer & Ascough article/talk.

Takes advantage of work by Greer & Ascough to self-promote — by smearing and insulting Pop Entheogen Scholarship and striking the relative stance of cautionary wise advisor — but doesn’t move the field of entheogen scholarship forward.

Look how awful entheogen scholars suck, those fools – I advise them, and buy my book.” -mh]

Self-assured denier of … “no solid proof” re specifically, ancient Xy.

Greer says “Colleague of Stang.

“psychedelics make feel chosen for a mission”, “ego inflation”, an “all too real danger”.

Video: Psychedelic Christianity: Real and Imagined | Christian Greer

Video title:
Psychedelic Christianity: Real and Imagined | Christian Greer
Harvard Law School Program on Jewish & Israeli Law
Uploaded Sep. 9, 2025
HARVARD LAW SCHOOL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYlotZTyOFA —

“We can accept that SOME Xns used SOME plants.”

Video’s Description: Psychedelic Christianity: Real and Imagined (Greer)

“Was the original Eucharist a psychedelic?

“Were the original Christian communities entheogenically supercharged?

“Was Jesus actually a mushroom? [he ridicules the psychedelic mysteries hypothesis]

“These are simply some of the questions that historians of drugs field on a regular basis.

“And to be clear, our answers are almost always disappointing. Let me explain why.

“All of the arguments that suggest a psychedelic origin of Christianity are pure conjecture.

“There is simply no solid proof that Christianity had a psychedelic origin or that ancient Christians used psychedelics.

Yet, as the expression goes, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

And I anticipate that some archaeo-chemists will eventually unearth a vessel that demonstrates some Christians in some part of the ancient world use some sort of psychedelic sacrament in their worship.

[Greer here makes Mosur look TERRIBLE & unbal – ppl are not PISSED OFF at Greer, but at Shar]

Greer is willing to play, w/ entheogen scholarship – Mosur garbage-cans the entire entheogen scholarship field. She makes enemies; Greer less so. -mh]

“And why not?

Over the last few millennia, humans across the globe have used a variety of psychedelic substances to access visionary states of consciousness.

This vast pharmacopoeia includes plants, roots, vines, cacti, nuts, herbs, nectar, roots, snuffs…. you get the picture.

There is no doubt that psychedelic substances have played a key role in human culture, animating religious rituals, rites of passage, communal ceremonies, not to mention healing, sorcery, divination, communion with the dead.

And all of that continues to the present day. But again, there is still no proof that they were used amongst Christians in the ancient world.

I’m not going to belabor this point by mapping all of the deficiencies in the arguments suggesting a psychedelic origin of Christianity.

Rather, I’m going to focus on the real stakes involved with this preoccupation with an imagined psychedelic Christian origin, as opposed to the real traditions of psychedelic Christianity.”

/ end Greer vid desc.

Commentary about Video: Psychedelic Christianity: Real and Imagined (Greer)

Christian Greer (conference Mar. 2025, uploaded Sep. 2025)

Greer makes Mosurinjohn look bad; he affirms reasonable though “no proof ancient Christian use of plants”.

“Avoid pharm’l Calvinism” (one extreme).

“Avoid ___” (other extreme; entheogen scholars see mushrooms everywhere)

He argues for this middle way, like tapestry-discarder Browns.

Mosur’s talk follows Greer’s talk.

Greer makes her look dull and obstinate; looking for a cheap opportunity to denigrate entheogen scholars, in order to elevate herself.

She overshoots, insults the hell out of the entire broad notion of history of psychedelics in religion, pisses off everyone in entheogen scholarship, then has to backpedal and say she didn’t say what she, hamfisted, clearly said:

You’re not allowed to study psychedelics in Euro history, because that is violence against Indig Shams, and is ignoring Indig Shams.

Sharday’s clumsy, rude, ignorant, biased message:

“Foolish, blundering entheogen scholars:
Do not research & theorize about the past 3000 years in Europe.
You have to restrict your research & theorizing to only the past 100 years, in the Americas.
Because there’s only evidence for psychedelics in Indig Shams history, not in other cultures.
You need to start reading and investigating history of Indig Shams, which no one has covered.”

Video’s Description Again, Mosur’s Talk, with Commentary

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).

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.

Comments about 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.

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.

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) = “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.

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
Crop by Michael Hoffman
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10551125c/f156.item.zoom
Fullscreen zoom WordPress image:
https://egodeaththeory.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/f156-center.jpg

Features:

  • guy near cloud: {fingers only vs. fingers & thumb} motif;
    L hand: IY;
    R hand: non-branching index finger, no thumb.
  • table leg touches {stable column base}.
  • harpist looks wrong: should not show both thumbs.
  • Branching antlers of deer nearly touch the L, branching side of {YI tree}.
  • Hunting dogs to kill the deer are touching the {cut right trunk}.
  • Nose of dog touch tail of deer.
  • {cut right trunk} touch L leg of dog. {cut left arm} motif.
  • Tree branching morph’y: bottom up as always: YI w/ {cut right trunk}; I-trident-I (L ‘I’ is {cut left branch}; R ‘I’ like a mushroom); trident.
  • Probably drawn by Eadwine, painted by Spain.
  • Eadwine probably would’ve painted as a mushroom tree.
  • Eadwine would’ve painted R foot forward, not L foot forward; the kneel stance.
  • {stable column} motif indicates probably drawn by Eadwine, painted by Spain.
  • Compare water through chute/frame, vs. f177’s dross chute to hellmouth.
  • Rescued guy’s YI hands above the mushroom dining sacred meal table.

{stable column base}
scb

Mythic Image: Bull Dragged Sees Snake Next to Trunk of Tree

Snake is far from branching, near ground.

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

Video: Between Sacred & Profane: Psychedelic Culture, Drug Spiritualities, and Contemporary America (Greer, Davis)

Video title:
Between Sacred & Profane: Psychedelic Culture, Drug Spiritualities, and Contemporary America
June 2, 2021
https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/06/02/video-between-sacred-profane-psychedelic-culture-drug-spiritualites-and-contemporary
Desc:

I need a topic classification, eg:

  • entheogen scholarship – extent of psychedelics in religious history; “the psychedelic mysteries hypothesis” (Ascough).
  • theory of psychedelic mental model transformation – the Egodeath theory: STEM-expressed positive, can-do explanatory model; Loose Cognitive Science; the {gate} requirement to enter the experiential space: stand on right foot; know eternalism-thinking as well as possibilism-thinking. Know that more wisdom = more control instability; to soar upward is to go unstable and fall down, thus forming a boundary limit, regardless of insane Pop Advaitababble about “all boundaries are unreal”, “your mind is an illusion”, “everything is illusion” – unhelpful, irrelevant, exact opposite of STEM and development progress.
  • Philosophy of Mystical experience (totally taken over by the positive unitive model of “mystical experience”; Popular Neo-Advaita).

“As part of the “Psychedelics and the Future of Religion” series, Dr. J. Christian Greer hosted a discussion panel with Dr. Erik Davis and Dr. Gary Laderman, focusing on the intersection of:

  • psychedelic culture
  • sacred drugs
  • the modern American zeitgeist
  • spiritualities centered on psychoactive substances
  • the material culture of psychedelia
  • the potential role humanities scholars could play in the current wave of clinical research on psychedelics“

Greer Video with Richard Miller

https://www.mindbodyhealthpolitics.org/p/the-past-and-present-of-psychedelic

Greer: Video, 2022, Richard Miller

LSA testimony: Ego Death from Morning Glory, 400 seeds, Heavenly Blue, experienced Ego Death, at 12:30.
https://www.mindbodyhealthpolitics.org/p/the-past-and-present-of-psychedelic?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&timestamp=866.4

I don’t go for, much, current events; current Pop Sike, and 20th C popular psychedelic spirituality. I shun popular writing like that.

In such a Pop Sike Cult book, I pick out & extract my topics:

  • entheogen scholarship; psychedelics in religious history
  • theory of mystical experience (“Philosophy of mysticism”)
  • psychedelic science; Learyan psychometrics questionnaires
  • STEM explanatory model of mental model transformation, from possibilism to eternalism; Loose Cognitive Science.
  • myth, mythic art, and analogies
    • the ahistoricity of religious founder figures
    • astral ascent mysticism
    • eg my correction of Hanegraaff and everyone who says “the 7 spheres of the visible cosmos, then leave cosmos and arrive at the Ogdoad/Ennead, which is outside the cosmos” — as if there are not 4000 stars but only 5 or 7. A few paragraphs later, safely separated, they say, contradicting: “8th sphere contains evil zodiac; avoid it”. “OGDOAD GOOD; 8TH SPHERE EVIL” (obv. they are the same thing).
    • Tauroctony interp per David Ulansey.
    • the medieval art genre of {mushroom-trees}

Ogdoad good; 8th sphere bad.

Wouter “Star Destroyer” Hanegraaff

Richard Miller’s book Psychedelic Wisdom sounds like folly [joke]
https://www.amazon.com/Psychedelic-Wisdom-Astonishing-Mind-Altering-Substances/dp/1644115433/ —

https://www.mindbodyhealthpolitics.org/p/the-past-and-present-of-psychedelic – desc:

About “Psychedelic Wisdom” Series

“Welcome back to Psychedelic Wisdom https://www.mindbodyhealthpolitics.org/s/psychedelic-wisdom – a Mind Body Health & Politics production.

“This publication features insights gleaned from thousands of psychedelic experiences of healing, creativity, connection, and consciousness expansion.

“I invite you to become a monthly subscriber or, if your budget allows it, a founding member.

“As a member of our tribe, your financial support will help sustain my team as we continue to provide bold, unabashed interviews on topics that require careful handling.

con’t:

Greer

con’t from above webpage about a video with Richard Miller & Xn Greer

[SAY EVERY WORD AT THE SAME VOLUME. 1 out of 10 words, Greer whispers:

“BEAR WAS THE SOUND ENGINEER

[whispered: for the grateful d..]

As a member of the WELL, I was in the Dead/Internet before the Web; I was one of the first couple people to announce the Web on the WELL. -mh]

“This week I have the privilege of bringing to you an academic researcher – Dr. J. Christian Greer – a scholar of religious studies, specializing in the global history of psychedelic spirituality.

“Several of Christian’s findings threaten to overturn a number of sacred cows in both academia and organized religion, but his diligent scholarly approach has led him to his current lecturing position at Stanford in the American studies department, where he can freely explore his controversial thesis regarding the prominence of psychedelics in modern American spirituality.

“We discuss this thesis with reference to bands like the Grateful Dead, charismatic figures like Timothy Leary, and authors like Aldous Huxley, along with the ancient history of psychedelics and the handful historians who have been brave enough to study it.

Christian [Greer] asks me [Richard Miller] whether I think the current renaissance in psychedelic research taking place is a sign of greater things to come, or represents a brief island of sanity before resumption of the long Dark Age I’ve lived under for more than 50 years.

[but “the current renaissance in psychedelic research”, which suicided in 2025 w/ Religious Leaders Study conflicts-of-interest fiasco, and self-destruction of the Hopkins inner circle team — is premised 100% on Popular Neo-Advaita, the positive unitive model of “mystical experience” – an extremely narrowed, exclusionary, narrowing, thus reductionist model -mh]

You can listen to the entire interview free of charge, or read the transcript for subscribers only below:”

Contradictory Writing – Best Bad Quotes & Backtracking & Shifting the Claim

Animation of the Motte-and-Bailey Fallacy

A copy of this section is in my Sharday Mosurinjohn page (“Invention of Religious Experience”) and in my Ascough page.

Video: What is the difference between science and pseudoscience? (Strange Loop, Dec. 2025)

Video title:
What is the difference between science and pseudoscience?
Dec. 4, 2025
YouTube Channel: The Strange Loop
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTpxICN-O1U&t=442s [7:22]

  • Animation of the motte-and-bailey fallacy at 7:22:
    Aggressive, bailey position: “Your mind controls reality.”
    Feeble, motte position: “How you think can have some effect on what happens.”
  • There’s no hard line between Science vs. Pseudoscience.
  • Summarizes the book about how after cold war, Physics was defunded, then Marketed by Woo scientists successfully:

How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival
David Kaiser, 2011
https://www.amazon.com/How-Hippies-Saved-Physics-Counterculture/dp/0393076369/

I sent someone a capture of an animation of animation of the Motte and Bailey fallacy. (Found it; above.)

Nice town hard defend –> Bad building easy defend

More powerful a term than “move goalposts”: you move them in, then out, then in; wide, narrow

Now we can employ both fallacies variants

move goalpost

the motte-and-bailey fallacy

Nice town hard to defend <–> Bad building easy to defend

What does Sharday do; which is which?

  • Sharday’s feeble motte position: “Maybe there were no psychedelics in mystery religions.”
  • Sharday’s aggressive bailey position: “There definitely were no psychedelics in mystery religions.”

Do not look for psychedelics in Western history.

You must make Indigenous Shams the central focus of your scholarship, and the boundary limit of your research.

How dare you, Shard and Cough, dictate in your Invention Abstract what we may or may not study, or must study or else colonial violence GTFO fake scholar, biased AF, shamelessly brazenly biased Shard & Cough. We entheogen scholars who MADE the field of Indigenous Shams, will study whatever the f*ck we want – F off, interloper, interfering, the outsider’s outsider.

Mosurinjohn & Ascough Are Guilty of Colonialist Violence because they Fail to Make Euro Psychedelics the Center of their Historical Research

They Must Not Study Indigenous Shams, because I Am the Declarer of the Correct Topics to Research

Shard and Cough are a laughingstock, look at her backpedal, DOES THEY NOW WANT WISH TO CHANGE THEIR RUDE IGNORANT UNPROFESSIONAL SMEAR-PHRASES IN THEIR ABSTRACT?

My god is the body of the article – read it 4th time – filled with gold nuggets of badness like the Abstract

Amateur outsider hacks, namecalling, bully argumentation. Hey Shard and Ascough you have to study what I tell you to, blundering disproved Pop Scholars.

Flip around all the badness.

The Egodeath theory Is the Correct Dictator of What People May and May Not Research

It’s good of Mosurinjohn and Ascough in their invention abstract to declare they are the dictators of entheogen scholarship

they mistake tho

the Egodeath theory is the dictator of entheogen scholarship

You must not study Indigenous Shams.

Mos & Cough: Per the Egodeath theory’s wise and correct, superior judgment, you and other scholars must not study Indigenous Shams. You must study only Western psychedelics history.

psychedelics myth demote history

the Egodeath theory is a history-free theory of myth and history of religion myth tripping

First get the the Mytheme theory right, global myth whatever era, all eras

global myth all eras

all regions

all eras

myth

psychedelics in myth i was glad to find ruck greek myth textbook but it miss heros, MONSTERS

Ruck’s Myth Textbook Suppresses Monsters

pushing positive unitive model – does

Does the book Consc Ruck push positive unitive model the positive unitive model of “mystical experience” like – it turned out recently, why i preorderd Wm Richards bk but it was nothing- is it the positive unitive model of “mystical experience”? How much?

How heavily d

How much do I dislike……it’s invis neutral book, made no impression at all, no takeaway at all

Sacred Knowledge

Wm Richards

~2016

like as much as ZZZ

Why am i as unimpressed by Richards as by Badiner? Allan ZZZ

in diff’t ways

like food gods, i hate how it takes as given, no psychedelics in relig origins … myth is my strong point.

history psychedelics myth

the history of myth

history of psychedelic myth

Sometimes i like history perspec.

dislike “history” usu

theory good

history bad

weed out history from the Egodeath theory

Brazenly Biased Shard & Ascough Dictate What We Must and Must Not Study, but the Egodeath theory Is the Correct Dictator of That: No More Indigenous Shams Research; You Must Study only Western Psychedelics History

Ascough and Mosurinjohn must submit to the authority of the Egodeath theory and must not study Indig Shams and must devote all their research to European psychedelics history.

Ascough and Mosurinjohn Must Not Study Indigenous Shams, and Must Devote All Their Research to Western Psychedelics History

Tip: You gotta want it, to find “evidence”, and data is theory bound

Tip: The Egodeath theory is the correct interpretive/ explanatory framework for the data and evidence, to generate the evidence and data that successfully supports the theory. The two legs work together: the best psychedelic myth proves the egodeath core theory

YOUR THEORY IS GARBAGE, BLUNDERING ASCOUGH AND MOSURINJOHN, Pop Scholars. Xn Greer writes Pop Esotericism for a popular audience. He ought to listen to the authorities: the Egodeath theory the Egodeath community secret hiden suppressed group that has the Secret Amanita Gnosis

On the mythic plane where is Amanita the super psychedelic, the master ultimate psychedelic like Rutajit book says: step aside 5MeO here comes Amanita:

The cybernetic theory supports the Mytheme theory,
the Mytheme theory supports the cybernetic theory.

psychedelic cybernetic eternalism analogy

the two fit:

psychedelic cybernetic eternalism

psychedelic analogy [not ‘myth’?] myth functions as analogy describing / for referent domain item {myth m}.

The Analogies chapter in Creating Scientific Concepts.

The Mytheme theory proves the Egodeath theory core theory, and
the Egodeath theory core theory proves the the Mytheme theory.

ALL YOUR RESEARCH ARE BELONG TO US.

Obnoxious Phrases in the Abstract or Schedule, of “Psychedelics, Eleusis, & the Invention of religious experience

I do a lot of internal correction of the field of foo.

keyboard shortcut

psychedelic science with psychometrics questionnaires – the name of a distinct field of debate articles; my page Moving Past Mysticism in Psychedelic Science

psychedelic science with psychometrics questionnaires
pspq

psychometric drugs

a psychometric trip

psychedelic science with psychometrics questionnaires

vs.

entheogen scholarship – insider tech term

whats that about?

psychedelics

religion

ancient

the “ancient psychedelic religion” theory
aprt

that’s my equiv of Ascough term:

the psychedelic mysteries hypothesis

long ago

field This is the era of internal correction of the field of foo

foo =

  • psychedelics in religious mythology
  • the history of psychedelics in religious mythology
  • entheogen scholarship – obscure, opaque, dark term: no one has ever heard the term ‘entheogen’. wtf is “scholarship” could be anything. u have to b expert in this field like me to decode WTF is intended… the bad term assumes that you already know:
  • ‘entheogen’
  • scholarship on WTF precisely could be anything

The Term ‘Entheogen Scholarship’ a poor description of the field

Slip n slide the domain of contention.

I already analyzed in detail connots of … least talked is psychotomimetic, WAY more accurate than totally wrong term ‘hallucinogen’

Must say psychedelic in the…. but name of the field but ….

entheogen scholarship is a good term sometimes, for insider writing

‘entheogen scholarship’ a very insider term – doesn’t mean “never use it!” I work hard to at least have available alien external lexicon:

the Egodeath theory is like

  • ego dissolution
  • in the DMN
  • of Popular Neo-Advaita
  • positive unitive model
  • the positive unitive model of “mystical experience” – SIMPLY TRASHCAN ALL OF YOUR THINKING, GET RID OF THE SELF-OTHER BOUNDARY: THAT’S SUPER PROFOUND TYPE OF Transcendent Knowledge – eliminate thinking and the mind and the world, …. THIS IS SHEER DEGENERATE REGRESSION this direction of Popular Neo-Advaita caricature revel in bad ways of shirking proper correct use of lang. Enthusiastic obfuscation and revelling in … even STace calls it or Pahnke calls it ALLEGED “ineffabilty”.

entheogen scholarship -thta’s that’s a more abstract term than descriptive term:

psychedelics history of mythology

the psychedelic history of mythology

the history of psychedelics in religious mythology

January 21, 2026: grid cap = multiple = branching; pages of book = multiple = branching; fingers often touch pages of book (side of book); thumb is against open page. in Great Canterbury Psalter.
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10551125c/f109.item.zoom

Angel feathers are YI; a single feather is sep. from the rest. f109. God’s R hand touches the “thumb” (sep. feather) of angel L wing.

Motivation for this Page

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

Hu’s interview of them shows indoctrination in realtime; Ascough prevents Mosur from affirming entheogen scholarship.

Need transcription of the actual talk [done], 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? No, or barely anything. She says focus on psychedelic transformation process, not just an isolated psychedelic session.

The Egodeath theory does not look for psychedelics (in isolation) in history of religious myth; the Egodeath theory looks for analogies of mental model transformation from possibilism to eternalism, from a series of 10 psilocybin sessions.

Status of this Webpage

12:48 p.m. January 21, 2026 — This page is very good now.

At the start of the video “Psychedelics, and the Birth”, Ascough disparages athiests for being condescending and insulting; he’s an atheist.

I now think much of the condescending tone in the article’s Abstract, and in Schedule, is from the SMUGLY SELF-ASSURED AND CONDESCENDING (& ignorant) atheist Ascough. He’s not in the field of entheogen scholarship.

Ascough’s Credibility Level: “synthesizing the ergot from mushrooms into an LSD type of substance”

Ascough is just another cheap lazy careless fly-by “demolishing” of entheogen scholarship by yet another outsider with no credibility, who talks (Birth video) of “ergot from mushrooms” nonsense:

The idea of of synthesizing the ergot from mushrooms into an LSD type of substance, there’s just very weak basi– you know we can do it now, in highly technical labs, but could priests do it back then? Not saying they couldn’t, but I’m saying where’s– it’s conjecture, but it has to be proven.

48:21, Psychedelics, and the Birth of Christianity, [48:21] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8GcCjja74M&t=2901s

Video title:
Psychedelics, and the Birth of Christianity – Dr. Richard Ascough
Dec 25, 2024
Channel: Ayush Prakash
Ayush Prakash Podcast
This is episode 111.
Richard S. Ascough is Professor of Religion Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada.
The topic of psychedelics starts at 44:30:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8GcCjja74M&t=2670s [44:30]

At least Letcher wrote a book, can’t call him lazy except he got 1 image from Stamets and neglected to read any other art evidence.

Mosur should break away from Ascough’s mental cell.

I titled this page “Mosurinjohn” not “Ascough”, because the motivation for creating this page is her video, specifically for me:

To compare her transcript vs. her description of the talk in the conf Schedule.

That description is 95% same as her & Ascough’s paper’s Abstract.

  • contains transcription of her 10-minute talk, which is a summary of her article, that finally got pub’d July 2025:
    Psychedelics, Eleusis, and the Invention of Religious Experience
  • Contains her written summary of her talk – and of her paper – from the conf schedule.

I’ve only read her article with Ascough 3 times; need 4th, now.

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.

See Also

Earlier, Aug. 2025 page I forgot about:
Psychedelics, Eleusis, and the Invention of Religious Experience (Mosurinjohn & Ascough, 2025)
https://egodeaththeory.org/2025/08/08/psychedelics-eleusis-and-the-invention-of-religious-experience-mosurinjohn-ascough-2025/

https://cyberdisciple.wordpress.com/site-map/ –

  • Classicist.
  • Psychedelics in Western religious history.
  • The Egodeath theory.
    • Eternalism-driven control-transformation.
    • Analogical psychedelic eternalism with 2-level, dependent control.
    • The Mytheme theory.

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

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Author: egodeaththeory

http://egodeath.com

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