By Author, not by Cybermonk. For scholarly commentary and markup, only; not for publication.

Contents:

• Introduction
• Analogy and the description of experience
• From analogy to cognitive phenomenology
• Mind manifestation and transformation of belief networks
• References
• Biography
• Motivation for this webpage

Introduction

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Psychedelic experiences typically involve intense temporary alterations in perception, and commonly lead to radical and permanent transformations in belief.

The LSD experience was described by Watts (1, p.44) as: “revelations of the secret workings of the brain, of the associative and patterning processes, the ordering systems which carry out all our sensing and thinking”,

similarly Grof (2, p.38) described the LSD experience as: “complex revelatory insights into the nature of existence…typically accompanied by a sense of certainty that this knowledge is ultimately more relevant and “real” than the perceptions and beliefs we share in everyday life.”

In this essay I will be examining the themes that are contained in descriptions of psychedelic tripping such as these.

I will present a generalised phenomenological model which relates psychedelic experience to the brain’s associative and patterning process, by examining the most standard and prominent features of such experiences and inferring general principles from them.

These standard features of tripping are the alterations in visual perception, and the strong tendency for transformation/reformation of core belief structures (‘life-changing’ experiences) during the course of psychedelic exploration.

My aim is to examine these features of psychedelic phenomenology

(that is, the subjective mental content of psychedelic trip experiences)

for the purposes of highlighting the underlying alterations in cognitive processing that are responsible for the psychedelic effect, and thereby to capture the original insight behind the label ‘psychedelic’ (or ‘mind-revealing’).

—

A major theme in what follows is the phenomenological comparison of the ordinary (non-intoxicated) state of consciousness with the non-ordinary psychedelic state of consciousness, for the purposes of highlighting the specific peculiarities of the latter.

During a psychedelic trip session, the mind (or at least, certain major aspects of the mind) becomes explicitly manifested such that it is made available for conscious inspection; by implication then, the mind is not manifested in ordinary, sober consciousness.

The question arises, therefore, of what exactly is meant by the ‘mind’ in this specific context, and what it means to say that the mind becomes temporarily ‘manifested’ in the psychedelic state of consciousness;

what exactly is the thing that can be clearly perceived during intense psychedelic tripping, which is hidden during ordinary experience.

In what follows I will offer a substantive answer to this question.

—

This essay is intended as a basic conceptual model of psychedelic experiencing, using the general approach of phenomenology (the study of conscious appearances).

It should be interpreted first and foremost as an approximation for the phenomenological content of experience, any metaphysical assertions are secondary to this main aim.

There are a few books dealing explicitly with the phenomenology of drug-induced altered states, these include Huxley’s (3) ‘Doors of perception’ and Shanon’s (4) ‘Antipodes of the Mind’.

Also, the literature in psychiatric phenomenology provides some useful concepts which can be applied to the drug-induced experiences, especially the writing of Sass (5 & 6) and Stanghellini (7).

Analogy and the description of experience

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            Analogy is a very useful tool for understanding the cognitive dynamics of psychedelic tripping; likening mental phenomena to physical situations and occurrences elucidates the structure of the perceptual alteration.

I will now briefly run through several of the most pertinent analogies and explain how they can be applied to psychedelic altered-state phenomenology.

Plato’s (8) famous ‘cave allegory’ likens ordinary perception to staring at shadows on the back wall of a cave; a perspective that most people are fully immersed in most of the time.

It is only the philosopher who is privileged to get a glimpse of reality from the higher-dimensional perspective, when he turns his head around to see the light at the mouth of the cave and discovers that the shadows are actually flat lower-dimensional projections of a deeper, hidden actual reality.

Plato’s suggestion is that a person who had never seen beyond the shadows would come to believe that the mere shadows constitute actual reality itself (as opposed to a lower-dimensional projection of actual reality), the altered perspective experienced by the philosopher presents a radical challenge to that belief.

—

            In a similar vein, ordinary perception can be likened to to staring at reflections in the surface of a perfectly still pool of water (the mind) where the surface of the pool is invisible.

The reflections remain perfectly solid and convincing/realistic so long as the surface of the water/mind is undisturbed, the psychedelic trip-effect is like causing a splash in the water so that the surface is distorted and becomes visible;

the reflections then ripple, undulate and fragment, and reveal themselves to be mere reflections as opposed to being the actual things that they reflect.

Albert Hoffman (9), the discoverer of LSD, described how during his bicycle ride home after his first deliberate LSD self-administration: “Everything in my field of vision wavered and was distorted as if seen in a curved mirror”.

The same as in Plato’s example, a person who had only ever seen the reflections, and who had never experienced the surface-manifesting psychedelic ‘splash’ effect, would believe in the concrete reality of the reflections, and in the illusion of direct perceptual access to concrete reality.

—

            Jackson (10) has written about the psychological effect of radically new experience; he constructs a thought-experiment involving a character ‘Fred’ who possesses the ability to perceive one additional colour (a subdivision of red) that nobody else can see.

This serves as an analogy for psychedelic tripping, because the discovery of the psychedelic perspective provides new information that is  not available in the ordinary state of consciousness.

Jackson suggests that Fred would be unable to communicate his experience to anyone who had not seen the extra colour; in much the same way, a tripper cannot communicate meaningfully about his psychedelic experiences to someone who had never had the experience.

Verbal trip reports cannot fully convey what it is like to trip, to truly know the experience a person has to have it themselves.

It could be argued from a behaviouristic point of view that what one learns on discovering psychedelic tripping is simply an ability to recall and describe the experiences, a person who had never had the experience, will be unable to recall and describe it.

Hoffman (11) has similarly likened the discovery of psychedelic tripping to an adolescent’s discovery of the experience of sexual climax.

—

            Whether psychedelics cleanse the doors of perception or ripple the surface of consciousness, the value of these analogies lies in the overall picture they provide of how the psychedelic effect works to reveal the operational structures of the mind.

Analogies such as these serve to model and reflect the two core effects of psychedelic tripping; the temporary alteration in perception, and the permanent transformation of belief structures.

From analogy to cognitive phenomenology

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            The various structural analogies can be translated into the language of philosophy of mind.

According to Marr’s (12) theory of visual perception, the 2-dimensional array of coloured light information on the surface of the eyes is translated by the mind into a complex, multi-levelled mental representation of the 3-dimensional physical environment.

Our external environment is illuminated by light which is reflected off of the surfaces of physical objects, some of the reflected light hits the surface of our eyes, and this 2-dimensional pattern of light of the surface of the eyes is processed and translated into a 3-dimensional mental image of the surrounding environment.

Fodor (13) makes a similar claim in his theory on mental modularity, according to which the brain contains dedicated modules for processing the information that is received as input from the body’s sensory organs; the output of these modules is the detailed mental image of the physical environment.

It is the mental image which is directly revealed to consciousness, so our ordinary conscious perception is inherently representational, we perceive 3-dimensional physical reality indirectly via mental symbols.

Hoffman (14) uses the terms ‘explicit representationalism’ and ‘dissociated cognition’ to describe the psychedelic perceptual/cognitive mode;

perception is representational at all times, but in the ordinary perceptual modality the mental representations behave so predictably and consistently (- they are so tangibly realistic) that they are tacitly conflated (or associated) with the mind-independent realities that they represent.

—

            Hoffman (14) suggests that during a psychedelic trip the mind adopts the metaperceptive point of view, from this vantage point the distinction between the subjective mental representations and objective physical reality is explicitly revealed to the mind;

physical objects look less solid and realistic during a trip, they cease to appear as mind-independent objective entities and take on a cartoon-like character.

A psychedelic trip is induced by altering the brain’s endogenous chemistry via externally introduced chemicals, yet the altered visual effects are perceived as actual qualities of external objects (along with their shape, colour etc.).

Huxley (15, p.12) conveyed this idea in his description of his first mescaline trip, by describing how his trousers appeared to him in his altered state as follows:

“Those folds in the trousers-what a labyrinth of endlessly significant complexity! And the texture of the grey flannel-how rich, how deeply, mysteriously sumptuous!. . . the folds of my grey flannels were charged with ‘is-ness’.”

Note how Huxley directly attributes these fantastic qualities to his actual trousers, and not to his own perception of his trousers.

—

            The physical surfaces of solid objects are commonly observed to flow, undulate and ripple like the surface of a liquid when psychedelic chemicals are introduced into the brain;

it follows logically from this that what the mind normally holds to be external, mind-independent concrete existence, is actually a deceptively detailed mental appearance.

There is no alternative way to account for the observation that an alteration of brain chemistry causes alterations in external reality other than by postulating that what we refer to as ‘external reality’ is in fact internal/mental in origin;

psychedelic visual alterations combined with basic reasoning conclusively demonstrate the principle of representationalism.

During a psychedelic trip, each person can observe for themselves that an alteration of internal neurochemistry results in a tangible alteration in the perceptual qualities of the external world, this naturally leads an inquiring mind to question the origin of perceptual phenomena, and the metaphysical status of the subject/object distinction.

This is why the temporary perceptual alteration can result in a permanent transformation of the mind’s conceptual  framework; the psychedelic effect challenges our most basic assumptions about the nature of perception.

—

            The phenomenologist Husserl (16) held that the ordinary (natural, habitual) manner in which the mind perceives reality is shaped by implicit background assumptions that give a coherent structure to our experience

(this idea is much in line with the general Kantian philosophical framework),

when these assumptions are made explicit and bracketed off by a process of private philosophical reflection which he called the phenomenological epoche, the mind’s ‘sphere of ownness’ is revealed, the raw subjective datastream prior to the mind’s conceptualising activity.

The psychiatrist Depraz (17) has likened Husserl’s phenomenological epoche to the process of psychotic mental dis-integration in schizophrenic patients,

suggesting that such experiences constitute a “phenomenological exploration of consciousness”, and that schizophrenia consists essentially in an “enhanced aptitude to perform the epoche”.

Freud (18, p.90) anticipated the comparison of psychosis and mind-manifestation when he compared the mind to a crystal, and used this comparison to suggest that observation of psychotic/schizoid mental processes can shed light on the structure of the sane mind.

According to Freud’s analogy a whole, undamaged crystal contains a complex internal structure which remains invisible so long as the crystal remains whole and undamaged.

However when a crystal shatters, the shape of the resulting shards of broken crystal reveal this (previously hidden) internal structure.

Similarly, the internal structure of the mind is invisible so long as it retains its wholeness and integrity; the mental shattering/fragmentation which occurs during periods of psychosis reveals its underlying structure in the “lines of cleavage” along which it falls apart.

According to Freud, the madman possesses a somewhat privileged perspective compared to a sane man because of his ability to perceive the hidden mental structures which are hidden to the sane man’s perspective.

This analogy of Freud’s is readily applicable to the phenomenological model of drug induced mind manifestation that I am outlining here.

—

            The psychiatrist Osmond (19), who was one of the earliest scientific investigators of LSD and who is responsible for creating the word ‘psychedelic’, observed that the mental dynamics involved in schizophrenic psychosis have crucial similarities to psychedelic tripping.

It was for this reason that LSD was first labelled as ‘psychotomimetic’ (psychosis mimicking), and only later re-labelled ‘psychedelic’.

So Depraz’ (17) insight about the comparison of Husserl’s epoche to schizophrenic mental dis-integration can be extended to shed light on psychedelic mental alteration.

The heightened perspective of transcendental subjectivity, which is a new field of awareness that is revealed after exercising the epoche

(and, if Depraz’ comparison is valid, also during periods of schizophrenic psychosis)

is equivalent to the perspective of explicit representationalism that is revealed in a psychedelic trip;

the core implicit assumption that is made explicit and bracketed off is the assumption that consciousness is directly in contact with external objects, or equivalently, the assumption of straightforward identity between mental representations and their referents.

---

            Sass (6) and Stanghellini (7) both employ the term ‘hyperreflexivity’ to describe the core peculiarity of the schizophrenic patient’s subjective experiences during periods of psychosis, and this term can be used equivalently to describe the temporary cognitive alteration of the psychedelic trip experience.

For Sass (6, p.37) cognitive hyperreflexivity contrasts with ordinary cognition because of its intensely inward-pointing orientation, such that: “the ego disengages from normal forms of involvement with nature and society, often taking itself, or its own experiences, as its own object”.

Similarly Stanghellini (7, p.165) suggests that in the hyperreflexive mind: “the ‘I’ breaks down into an experiencing I-subject contemplating an experienced I-object” such that: “the act of perception itself turns out to be an explicit intelligible object”.

Again here we see a clear indication of the general idea that altered state experience involves a specific kind of dissociation in the mind between symbol and referent, a cognitive process of representation which normally operates silently in the background is brought intensely into the foreground of awareness.

—

            With this model of psychedelic experiencing in mind, it is worth pointing out that the word ‘hallucinogen’ which is sometimes used to denote psychedelic drugs is misleading, insofar as it implies that the effect of the drug is to induce hallucinations that are not present in the ordinary state of consciousness.

What is actually happening in a psychedelic trip is that a certain hallucinatory (or illusory, mistaken) aspect of our ordinary experience

(our tacit conflation of the mind-dependent internal perceptual image with the mind-independent external world)

becomes explicitly apparent, which is merely implicit (and therefore typically taken for granted and not noticed) during ordinary experience.

In his exhaustive compendium of phenomenological alterations that are observed in ayahuasca sessions, Shanon (4, p.205) includes:

“the assesment, very common with ayahuasca, that what is seen and thought during the course of intoxication defines the real, whereas the world that is ordinarily perceived is actually an illusion.”.

Similarly Watts (1, p.15) likens psychedelia to the transformations of consciousness that are undertaken in Taoism and Zen, which he says is:

“more like the correction of faulty perception or the curing of a disease…not an acquisitive process of learning more and more facts or greater and greater skills, but rather an unlearning of wrong habits and opinions”.

Psychedelic drugs are often referred to as ‘teachers’ (particularly the plant-based drugs such as ayahuasca and psilocybin mushrooms), so this can be understood as the core lesson that they teach,

– they reveal the fundamental cognitive operation of fusing  together representation and referent, this is the sense in which ‘mind’ becomes ‘manifested’ during a trip.

—

            Hoffman (20) states that the representational nature of mind is obscured in our ordinary perceptual modality by the high degree of stability and consistency in the way that mental representations behave

(for example, solid objects remain firmly solid), which creates the strong impression that mental phenomena are concretely existing (and therefore non-mental) entities,

and that consciousness directly perceives mind-independent reality so that perception is not mediated by mental representations; this is the real meaning of a ‘hallucination’ insofar as it applies to hallucinogenic drugs.

The hallucinatory aspect of perception is exposed by the psychedelic trip-effect because the ordinary stability and consistency of the representations is noticeably diminished during a trip, solid objects appear much less solid, physical reality takes on a fluid appearance.

Mind manifestation and transformation of belief networks

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            In addition to the temporary perceptual alterations observed during psychedelic trip sessions, another important aspect of psychedelic phenomenology is a kind of radical psychological restructuring;

an [really, really, really] intense trip can be a life-transforming experience which leads to a major overhaul of a person’s internal framework of beliefs (Hoffman (21) calls this framework the mental worldmodel).

Thagard (22) has comprehensively modelled the process of psychological paradigm transformation;

when new information comes to light that cannot be accounted for or explained by an established belief network, the entire network must undergo revision in order to accommodate the new information.

For example, someone who had lived their entire life in a black-and-white environment would believe implicitly that there are no other colours since they have no way of perceiving them.

Such a person would experience a drastic disproof of that implicit belief, if they are suddenly exposed to the world of colour for the first time (like Jackson’s (10) thought-experiment character Mary, who is suddenly shown a red rose after spending a lifetime in black-and-white).

This is comparable to the mental transformation that is undergone when a person becomes acquainted with psychedelia;

the central difference between the pre and post psychedelic belief configurations, is that the new configuration accommodates the possibility of psychedelic experience

(it accommodates the perceptual dissociation between symbol and referent).  

—

            The epistemological dynamics that occur during the process of waking up from a vivid dream provide a close analogy for psychedelic mental transformation;

when fully immersed in a dream world one is not aware that one is dreaming, so the contents of dream-consciousness are taken to be simply real, the subject is not aware that his surrounding environment is a mentally projected and imaginary.

After waking up, when reflecting back on the dream, the mental contents are immediately re-interpreted as unreal, imaginary mental projections in light of the new experience of waking consciousness (“it was just a dream”).

Similarly, upon perceiving directly the symbol/referent distinction in the psychedelic state of consciousness, the phenomenal content of ordinary consciousness is reinterpreted in the light of the new information that is provided by the heightened psychedelic perspective.

Every psychedelic trip lasts for a certain duration then ends as the chemicals are metabolised by the body, so the psychedelic perspective which reveals manifest phenomena as projected mental representations is only experienced on a temporary basis,

but if a person is able to fully grasp and remember the psychedelic insights after the trip ends (and become generally acquainted with the intense altered experiential modality), then the mind is permanently transformed.

—

            The psychedelic belief revision is held in place by the memory of the transformative psychedelic experience, this memory provides a constant reminder which prevents the old pre-psychedelic set of beliefs/assumptions from re-establishing itself.

The existence of the altered-state modality of dissociated/hyperreflexive cognition presents a fundamental overrider to pre-established belief networks, which forces an overhaul of those networks.

The axiomatic basis of the pre-psychedelic, experientially naïve mental worldmodel (essentially, the belief in straightforward identity between mental representations and their referents) is critically undermined by transformative psychedelic experience.

Per Thagard (22) this undermining of a metaphysical model necessitates a systematic restructuring of the model, adding crucial qualifiers to foundational assumptions;

in this case the qualifiers concern the existence of an experience which seems to disprove the assumed identity of representation and referent.

—

References

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1. Watts A. The Joyous Cosmology; Adventures in the chemistry of consciousness. Pantheon Books; 1962

2. Grof S. The Holotropic Mind; The three levels of human consciousness and how they shape our lives. San Francisco Harper; 1993

3. Huxley A. The Doors of Perception: And Heaven and Hell. Thinking Ink 2003

4. Shanon B. The Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience. Oxford University Press; 2003

5. Sass L. The paradoxes of delusion; Wittgenstein, Schreber and the schizophrenic mind. Cornell university press; 1994

6. Sass L. Madness and modernism. Basic books; 1992

7. Stanghellini G. Disembodied spirits and deanimated bodies; the psychopathology of common sense. Oxford university press; 2004

8.Plato. Cooper J editor. The complete works. Hackett publishing. 1997

9. Inventor of LSD Albert Hoffman’s first trip. The Guardian [internet]. 2008 1^st May. Available from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/01/medicalresearch

10. Jackson F. Epiphenomenal Qualia. The Philosophical Quarterly 1982 April. 32(127): 127-136

11. Hoffman M. Determinism as Enlightenment [internet]. [place unknown]1985-2007. Available from: http://www.egodeath.com/DeterminismEnlightenment.htm

12. Marr A. Vision: A Computational Investigation into the Human Representation and Processing of Visual Information. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman & Company; 1983

13. Fodor J. The modularity of mind. MIT press; 1983

14. Hoffman M. The Entheogen Theory of Religion and Ego Death [internet]. [place unknown]1985-2007. Available from http://www.egodeath.com/mobile.htm

15. Huxley A. The Doors of Perception. Flamingo; 1977

16. Husserl E. Cartesian Meditations. Kluwer academic publishers; 1999

17. Depraz N. Putting the epoché into practice: schizophrenic experience as illustrating the phenomenological exploration of consciousness. In Fulford B, Morris K, Sadler J, Stanghellini G editors. Nature and narrative, an introduction to the philosophy of psychiatry. Oxford University press; 2003

18. Freud S. New introductory lectures on psychoanalysis. Penguin, 1988

19. Obituary; Doctor Humphrey Osmond. The Telegraph [internet]. 2004 16th Feb. Available from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1454436/Dr-Humphry-Osmond.html

20. Hoffman M. Mental Construct Processing [internet]. 1985-2007. available from http://www.egodeath.com/mcp.htm

21.Hoffman M. The Egoic and Transcendent Mental Worldmodels [internet]. 1985-2007. Available from: http://www.egodeath.com/egoictranscendentmentalmodels.htm

22.Thagard P. Conceptual Revolutions. Princeton University press; 1992

Biography

Author is a philosopher and psychonautical explorer, he graduated from college with PhD in Knowledge, hosted and produced the Podcast, and has given presentations on psychedelic phenomenology at universities.

Motivation for this webpage

What made me think about this excellent, useful, relevant article is this non-excellent article; I probably like Kant and find Continental Phen’y worthless and irrelevant despite Houot’s writings claiming that this sort of Phen’y is relevant:

Phenomenology for Psychedelic Researchers: A Review of Current Methods & Practices (Houot, 2021) – I considered making a page containing that article, but seems worthless.

I would only make such a page to confirm that that approach is worthless and cannot hold a candle to the present article, which is related to the Egodeath theory.

Houot has sure not succeeded in the slightest persuading me of his claims that such Phen’y is important for psychonauts.

The present Phen’y article is important for psychonauts.

This article is by Author, not by Cybermonk.

For scholarly commentary and markup, only; not for publication.

Not a backup; for markup.

I read this aloud on the Egodeath Mystery Show, and have read a few times.

It is an ideal, perfect treatment, though I can probably extend and highlight some points.

Article not found by me at Academia.edu now.

This page is not for accurate clone backup of article as its primary purpose.

https://egodeaththeory.org/?s=%22breaking+convention%22

Michael Hoffman, 9:24 pm Mar. 28, 2025

Contents:

Esotericism in Amsterdam:

• Q: Did You Study with Wouter Hanegraaff?
• Q: Do Academics at Amsterdam Go to Smartshops?

Science Explaining Religion:

• Q: How Broad Is Your Conception of “Science” and “Religion” (Mysticism, Esotericism): Can the Science approach, broadly, Explain that which Religion is trying to get at?
• Q: Underneath the Noise and Confusion that Is Religion, Mysticism, and Mythology, Is There Valuable Transcendent Knowledge, or Mental Model Transformation, Buried, and Indirectly Expressed?
• Q: Is there Some Type of Transcendent Knowledge or Enlightenment that Science Can and Should Explain?
• Q: Is there Treasure Buried under the Mess and Confusion that’s Religion, Mysticism, and Mythology?
• Q: Should Science and Engineering and Cognitive Science Strive to Explain the Transcendent Knowledge that’s Poorly Conveyed by Religion, Mysticism, Mythology, and Esotericism?
• Q: Is Transcendent Knowledge Worth the Attention of Science?
• Q: Are You Allergic to Religion? What Kind of Science Approach Fits with What Kind of Religion Approach?
• Q: Do You Contribute any Insight or Analysis on Any Sort of Religous Transcendent Revelation in Any Way?
• Q: What Can People Do to Overcome the Rift Between Psychedelic Scientists vs. Psychedelic Mystics?

Shipwreck Questions:

• Q: How Do We Avoid Shipwreck in a Storm of Control Instability in the Altered State?
• Q: Is the Pilot or Steersman of a Ship Have Stable, Autonomous Control of their Steering, in the Altered State?
• Q: Metal Songs Such as No One at the Bridge by Rush, Reports Stormy Risk of Shipwreck – What Is Your Solution to Shipwreck in a Storm of Control Instability in the Altered State?

Eternalism Questions:

• Q: Is Ramesh Balsekar Correct and Insightful that Enlightenment Is Knowledge of No-Free-Will?
• Q: Is the Experience of No-free-will a Mystical Revelation?
• Q: As a Scientist, Is Freewill the Case?
• Q: Is Personal Control Monolithic, Autonomous Control that Selects from Possibilities that Are Available? Or, Is Personal Control Limited, 2-Level, Dependent Control?
• Q: Is the future open, or closed? Do you hold to Possibilism (open future), or Eternalism (closed, pre-existing future)?

Control Stability Questions:

• Q: Does a Rational Psychonaut Have Stable Control by Controlling Their Own Source of Thoughts, as an Autonomous Agent?
• Q: Does a Person Control Their Own Source of Thoughts, and Create their Own Future?
• Q: What Is Your Technology and Advice for Someone Who Is Terrified to Look at Their Source of Control-Thoughts for Fear of Monstrous Threatening Unavoidable Thoughts? [todo: move up w/ control stability]

• Q: Do You Reject the Same Popular Ideas of Enlightenment as Tim Freke? (Emergent Evolutionary Spirituality)

Surrenderism:

• Q: Underneath the Idea of Surrenderism, Is There a Real and Important Dynamic?
• Q: Do You Have an Explanation of the Dynamics of Mystical Surrender?
• Q: Is Science and Engineering Able to form an Explanatory Model of the Dynamics of Mystical Surrender?
• Q: Why Doesn’t the Book Have a Section on Surrenderism, Given that That’s the Central Topic in Your Masters’ Dissertation and in your article The Psychonaut’s Ship?

• Q: How serious are you on page 10 “Don’t read this book if you used any existing approach to Psychedelics?” Are we supposed to read your book, or not?
• Q: When It’s Revealed that You Cannot Control Your Source of Control Thoughts, But Thoughts Arise Unstoppably and Are Unbound in the Psychedelic State, How Can The Personal Control System Avoid Panic Seizure and Restore Stable Control?
• Q: What Technology Discovery Are You Withholding in the Book, Page __?
• Q: How to package and deliver a psychedelic discovery, after the discovery? Do your writings only aim to get people started toward discovering, or is it aiming to cover end-to-end?
• Q: Have you made any Psychedelic discoveries, or will you focus on articulating an approach and mentality opposed to therapy?
• Q: Psychedelics focus awareness on inner workings of mind, so why does the book narrowly use model of ships exploring the external, physical world?
• Q: What are some specific useful, relevant technologies provided to give people stable control while on Psilocybin? A mindset?
• Commentary
• The Irony in this Page Title: “Psychedelic “Church” Concept Causes Allergic Seizure Reaction in Houot the “Naturalist, Rational Psychonaut” Who Is Against “Anyone Esoteric or Mystical or Spiritual or Religious or Transcendent or Woo”
• Corpse, Stable Building Protected by Cloth Washed Clean
• Why Creating a Page Focused on Formulating Questions for the Author
• Increase Your Control Agency Harder and Harder Until It Explodes in Climactic Control Transformation
• ⚖️💥☸️
• Metal Lyrics about Transformative Crisis of Control
• No One at the Bridge (Rush, 1975)
• S.A.T.O. (e.g. Sailing the Acid Trip Ocean) (Ozzy Osbourne, 1981)
• Heaven Can Wait (Iron Maiden, 1986)
• See Also
  • Toward a Philosophy of Psychedelic Technology: An Exploration of Fear, Otherness, and Control (Houot, 2019)
  • Phenomenology for Psychedelic Researchers: A Review of Current Methods & Practices (Houot, 2021)
  • The Psychonaut’s Ship: Pairing Technologies with Psychedelics to Augment User Agency (Houot, 2022)
  • Rise of the Psychonaut: Maps for Amateurs, Nonscientists and Explorers in the Psychedelic Age of Discovery (Houot, 2025)
• Dionysus, the Pilot Who Honors Dionysus and Lives, and the Captain Who Doesn’t Honor Dionysus and Dies

Q: Did You Study with Wouter Hanegraaff?

Q: Do Academics at Amsterdam Go to Smartshops?

Q: How Broad Is Your Conception of “Science” and “Religion” (Mysticism, Esotericism): Can the Science approach, broadly, Explain that which Religion is trying to get at?

Q: Underneath the Noise and Confusion that Is Religion, Mysticism, and Mythology, Is There Valuable Transcendent Knowledge, or Mental Model Transformation, Buried, and Indirectly Expressed?

Q: Is there Some Type of Transcendent Knowledge or Enlightenment that Science Can and Should Explain?

Q: Is there Treasure Buried under the Mess and Confusion that’s Religion, Mysticism, and Mythology?

We Agree on Pro-Science, Pro-Engineering.

We agree on Anti- the Mystical/ Mythical/ Religious Style of Expression.

Do We Disagree whether there Is Treasure of Enlightenment and Mental model transformation, Buried Underneath the Noise and Junk & Confusion Overlaid by Religion?

The Science and Engineering approach to forming an explanatory framework is the best approach to explaining anything, and is able to efficiently explain the Transcendent Knowledge “treasure” that is expressed in a confused, garbled way by religion, mysticism, mythology, esotericism, and medieval art motifs.

Q: Should Science and Engineering and Cognitive Science Strive to Explain the Transcendent Knowledge that’s Poorly Conveyed by Religion, Mysticism, Mythology, and Esotericism?

Q: Is Transcendent Knowledge Worth the Attention of Science?

Q: Does Alien Entity Contact Serve a Religious Function within the Rational Psychonaut Science Explorer Discoverer Approach?

Q: Is this an “Elite Evolutionary Spirituality” Approach, the “Rational Psychonaut Science Explorer Discoverer” Approach?

Requiring Explorers to be Fit and Atheist Rational, While Rejecting (in all senses) anything Religious, Mystical, Esoteric, Spiritual.

Rational, Scientific, Fit, Mature, Fit to be an explorer; vs.
Irrational, Immature, Mentally Ill

Elitist Eugenics-Like Prideful Evolutionism

Is Tim Freke’s attempt at “evolutionary spirituality / emergent spirituality” like this, or not?

Perhaps such evolutionary spirituality fans attach themselves to Tim Freke.

I don’t care for Freke’s focus in Soul Story on survival of the soul after literal bodily death.

I embrace the potential of Science, WITHOUT scorched-earth dismissal of religion, sprituality, mysticism, mythology – I just think that the Sceiecne & esp. Engineering approach to explanatory useful framework to produce a useful technology for everyone, to contribute to the collective shared knowleddge base. I WANT EVERYONE TO UNDERSTAND WHAT RELIGIOUS MYTH IS ACTUALLY REFLECTING.

I cringe at the tone or framing that Houot uses, that only “fit” people are suitable to do Rational Science Discovery Exploration.

I agree that this approach is superior:

• Rational Science discovery exploration <– superior approach, to figure out…
• Religion, sprituality, mysticism, mythology <– the referent to be figured out.

Jan 1988: Ken Wilber says that the nature of ego transcendence is X. But I say, the scientifically clear and engineering-useful explanatory framework is, instead,

• Block-universe eternalism
• Psychedelic loose cognition; loose cognitive association binding
• Mental model transformation per the Way of Zen by Alan Watts: instant, quick, binary switch of mental models.
• To have non-dysfunctional cross-time control. So that one can “plan and do” as expected, NOTHING MORE THAN THAT – not super-respecting enlightenment; rather, I never put enlightenment on a pedestal; instead, I had a disrespectful but PRAGMATIC AND MODEST valuation of enlightenment, Transcendent Knowledge.

Jules Evans – Evolutionary spirituality as a frame for psychedelic experiences

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGzEWLZHTQ –

Video title:
Jules Evans – Evolutionary spirituality as a frame for psychedelic experiences
ch: Exeter Psychedelics Group
Nov. 1, 2023
Talk and Q+A with Exeter Research Psychedelic Colloquium.

Desc. of video:

“One of the dominant cultural frames for psychedelics in western culture over last 130 years has been evolutionary spirituality.

“This tradition suggests human evolution is not finished and can be guided towards the creation of higher beings through such techniques as psychedelics and eugenics or genetic modification.

“But is everyone evolving into a new species, or just an elite? Jules will discuss the tradition of evolutionary spirituality, raise the ethical implications of this tradition – its tendency to spiritual narcissism, contempt for the less-evolved masses, Social Darwinism and Malthusianism, spiritual eugenics, and illiberal utopian politics—and suggest responses to these limitations.”

Comments about Video

Jan Irvin warned about this, with Huxley as Dr. Evil, contempt for the masses.

I’m too autistic to use this approach. In 1985 I was just a buggy person trying to repair their malfunctioning personal control system, and then give that explanation to everyone.

That’s it. No other narrative. I’m not a narrative guy, other than that.

In 1985, my father instructed me on leading edge human potential, self-help, transpersonal psychology.

After my block-universe eternalism breakthrough in Jan 1988, my friends had books by Leary, which I found had no appeal and no relevance.

I didn’t cross the street at Stanford in 1991 to bother going to the big psychedelics Bridge conference – that approach was not relevant enough to my project of writing-up my explanatory model of what ego transcendence is really about AND WHY WE CANNOT HAVE POSI-CONTROL ACROSS TIME.

My discovery of eternalism and its 100% total ego death cancellation of a certain sense of monolithic, autonomous control, was the opposite of personal grandiosity.

I am personally grand as an explainer of why 2-level, dependent control is the case, humbling-to-death King Ego.

When I intended to learn what ego transcendence is really about, in order to repair my dysfunctional cross-time control.

dysfunctional cross-time control
dctc

Q: Are You Allergic to Religion? What Kind of Science Approach Fits with What Kind of Religion Approach?

Q: Do You Contribute any Insight or Analysis on Any Sort of Religous Transcendent Revelation in Any Way?

Q: What Can People Do to Overcome the Rift Between Psychedelic Scientists vs. Psychedelic Mystics?

Q: How Do We Avoid Shipwreck in a Storm of Control Instability in the Altered State?

Q: Is the Pilot or Steersman of a Ship Have Stable, Autonomous Control of their Steering, in the Altered State?

Q: Metal Songs Such as No One at the Bridge by Rush, Reports Stormy Risk of Shipwreck – What Is Your Solution to Shipwreck in a Storm of Control Instability in the Altered State?

See appendix below:
Metal Lyrics about Transformative Crisis of Control

Q: Is Ramesh Balsekar Correct and Insightful that Enlightenment Is Knowledge of No-Free-Will?

Q: Is the Experience of No-free-will a Mystical Revelation?

Q: As a Scientist, Is Freewill the Case?

Q: Is Personal Control Monolithic, Autonomous Control that Selects from Possibilities that Are Available? Or, Is Personal Control Limited, 2-Level, Dependent Control?

Q: Is the future open, or closed? Do you hold to Possibilism (open future), or Eternalism (closed, pre-existing future)?

Q: Does a Rational Psychonaut Have Stable Control by Controlling Their Own Source of Thoughts, as an Autonomous Agent?

Q: Does a Person Control Their Own Source of Thoughts, and Create their Own Future?

Q: What Is Your Technology and Advice for Someone Who Is Terrified to Look at Their Source of Control-Thoughts for Fear of Monstrous Threatening Unavoidable Thoughts?

Q: Do You Reject the Same Popular Ideas of Enlightenment as Tim Freke? (Emergent Evolutionary Spirituality)

Tim Freke recently is trying to reject pop spirituality concepts such as

• Nonduality; unity; oneness.
• Ego is illusion. The self doesn’t exist.
• Separate self is an illusion.
• The goal of enlightenment is to get rid of the ego.

Q: Underneath the Idea of Surrenderism, Is There a Real and Important Dynamic?

Q: Do You Have an Explanation of the Dynamics of Mystical Surrender?

Q: Is Science and Engineering Able to form an Explanatory Model of the Dynamics of Mystical Surrender?

Q: Why Doesn’t the Book Have a Section on Surrenderism, Given that That’s the Central Topic in Your Masters’ Dissertation and in your article The Psychonaut’s Ship?

Q: How serious are you on page 10 “Don’t read this book if you used any existing approach to Psychedelics?” Are we supposed to read your book, or not?

Please put this book down if you’ve never ingested psychedelics or if you take them for therapeutic, recreational, religious, spiritual growth, personal growth, cognitive enhancement, creativity-inspirational, or self-actualizing purposes. It’s not for you … With that said, my message will not resonate with everyone.

p. 10, Rise of the Psychonaut: Maps for Amateurs, Nonscientists and Explorers in the Psychedelic Age of Discovery (Houot, 2025)

Rise of the Psychonaut: Maps for Amateurs, Nonscientists and Explorers in the Psychedelic Age of Discovery (Houot, 2025) https://egodeaththeory.org/2024/12/24/rise-of-the-psychonaut-houot-2025/ & https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DPSJGMFR

Q: When It’s Revealed that You Cannot Control Your Source of Control Thoughts, But Thoughts Arise Unstoppably and Are Unbound in the Psychedelic State, How Can The Personal Control System Avoid Panic Seizure and Restore Stable Control?

Q: What Technology Discovery Are You Withholding in the Book, Page __?

todo: figure out the p. #

Q: How to package and deliver a psychedelic discovery, after the discovery? Do your writings only aim to get people started toward discovering, or is it aiming to cover end-to-end?

Q: Have you made any Psychedelic discoveries, or will you focus on articulating an approach and mentality opposed to therapy?

Q: Psychedelics focus awareness on inner workings of mind, so why does the book narrowly use model of ships exploring the external, physical world?

Q: What are some specific useful, relevant technologies provided to give people stable control while on Psilocybin? A mindset?

Commentary

The Irony in this Page Title: “Psychedelic “Church” Concept Causes Allergic Seizure Reaction in Houot the “Naturalist, Rational Psychonaut” Who Is Against “Anyone Esoteric or Mystical or Spiritual or Religious or Transcendent or Woo”

 Corpse, Stable Building Protected by Cloth Washed Clean

Why Creating a Page Focused on Formulating Questions for the Author

Thanks to RL for asking me the question of me asking Ooh-Oh questions.

A. M. Houot (Ooh-Oh)

• My questions and this page are not just about the book. I treat Houot’s entire corpus: diss + 2 articles + book.

The book lacks – incongruously – Houot’s fav topic, disparagement of mystics’ ‘surrenderism”.

See Michelle Janikian’s book for crude folk surrenderism writeup, her book is good.

Your Psilocybin Mushroom Companion: An Informative, Easy-to-Use Guide to Understanding Magic Mushrooms—From Tips and Trips to Microdosing and Psychedelic Therapy
(Guides to Psychedelics & More)
Michelle Janikian, September 23, 2021
https://www.amazon.com/Psilocybin-Mushroom-Companion-Easy-Mushrooms/dp/1646043901/ —

Blurb:

“Learn. Prepare. Trip. Transform!

“Discover the transformational power of psilocybin mushroom with this all-encompassing guide to harnessing magic mushrooms safely and effectively.

“With so much misinformation surrounding magic mushrooms out there, it can be hard to separate fact from fiction.

“This is where Your Psilocybin Mushroom Companion comes in to help.

“In this book, you’ll find a comprehensive yet friendly guide to everything there is to know about magic mushrooms.

“Learn how to plan safe, effective trips with easy-to-follow step-by-step advice.

“Discover how to train a guide to take care of those on psychedelic voyages, as well as how to access the transformative nature of these experiences.

“Even learn how microdosing can improve your mood, cognitive functioning, creativity, physical stamina, and more.

“With the most up-to-date research, Your Psilocybin Mushroom Companion will put magic mushrooms into perspective, dispel myths and urban legends, and open your mind to the benefits of psychedelic tripping.”

/ end blurb Janikian book

Increase Your Control Agency Harder and Harder Until It Explodes in Climactic Control Transformation

⚖️💥☸️

…. i wonder…. Houot in book says he’s withholding something.

LOL there’s my Q1: WHAT ARE YOU WITHHOLDING FROM US?

I bet something about surrenderism and WE MUST INCREASE OUR EGOIC SELF CONTROL POWER:

STAND ON LEFT FOOT HARDER!

UNTIL BLOW UP TO SMITHEREENS IN A FIRE PIT OF CYBERNETIC CONTROL SEIZURE DEATH FAILURE revealing there is no power there at all.

Metal Lyrics about Transformative Crisis of Control

No One at the Bridge (Rush, 1975)

No One at the Bridge (Rush, 1975)
channel: Wraxtiorre’s Mess
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70BgSKTBh9s —

https://www.rush.com/songs/the-fountain-of-lamneth/

Lyrics by Neil Peart:

III. No One At the Bridge 

Crying back to consciousness
The coldness grips my skin
The sky is pitching violently
Drawn by shrieking winds
Seaspray blurs my vision
Waves roll by so fast
Save my ship of freedom
I’m lashed helpless to the mast

Call out for direction
And there’s no one there to steer
Shout out for salvation
But there’s no one there to hear
Cry out supplication
For the maelstrom is near
Scream out desperation
But no one cares to hear

Remembering when first I held
The wheel in my own hands
I took the helm so eagerly
And sailed for distant lands

But now the sea’s too heavy
And I just don’t understand
Why must my crew desert me
When I need a guiding hand

— Rush

S.A.T.O. (e.g. Sailing the Acid Trip Ocean) (Ozzy Osbourne, 1981)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGoQ6AZYfMc —

https://www.google.com/search?q=s.a.t.o.+lyrics
http://egodeath.com/sablyrics.htm#xtocid229130 — Egodeath interpretation

Sailing the Acid-Trip Ocean
Lyrics by Bob Daisley —

Heaven Can Wait (Iron Maiden, 1986)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKiwU6l6cUY —

Lyrics – Improved Transcription by Michael Hoffman April 12, 2025, for scholarly study.

Can’t understand what is happening to me
This isn’t real, this is only a dream
But I never have felt, no, I never have felt this way before

I’m looking down on my body below
I lie asleep in the midst of a dream
Is it now, could it be, the – Angel of Death has come for me?

I can’t believe that really my time has come
I don’t feel ready, there’s so much left undone
And it’s my soul, and I’m not gonna let it get away [loose cognitive experience of soul (egoic control agency) vanishing]

Heaven can wait
Heaven can wait
Heaven can wait
Heaven can wait ’til another day

I have a lust for the Earth below
And Hell itself is my only foe
‘Cause I’ve no fear of dying; I’ll –
Go when I’m good and ready

I snatch a glimpse of the lights eternal rays
I see a tunnel, I stand amazed
At all of the people standing there in front of me

Into the paths of rightness I’ll be led
Is this the place where the living join the dead?
I wish I knew this was only just a nightmare [not just a temporary Mystery Religion terror trip initiation awe; produces mental model maturation: permanent modification of conscious foundation of source of control thoughts]

Take my hand, I’ll lead you to the promised land
Take my hand, I’ll give you immortality
Eternal youth, I’ll take you to the other side
To see the truth, the path for you is decided [non-branching worldline in block universe 4D spacetime per eternalism and Minkowski; {snake frozen in rock}]

My body tingles, I feel so strange [acid effect]
I feel so tired, I feel so drained
And I’m wondering if I’ll ever be the same again [yes and no, after the foundation of control-thought source is re-conceived]

Is this in limbo or Heaven or Hell?
Maybe I’m going down there as well
I can’t accept my soul will drift forever

I feel myself floating back down to Earth
So could this be the hour of my rebirth
Or have I died or will I wake from dreaming?

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Stephen/ Percy/ Harris

Heaven Can Wait lyrics © BMG Rights Management

Key Lyrics about Psychedelic Eternalism

https://egodeathyahoogroup.wordpress.com/2021/01/09/egodeath-yahoo-group-digest-105/#message5359 — lists several songs:

Destiny planned out
Speculation of the wise
— Blizzard of Ozz, “Believer”

To see the truth:
The path for you is decided
— Iron Maiden, “Heaven Can Wait”

All preordained, a prisoner in chains
A victim of venomous fate
— Rush, “Freewill”

I’ve been stricken by fate
Wrapped up tight, cannot move, can’t break free
Hand of doom has a tight grip on me
— Metallica, “Trapped Under Ice”

/ end of lyric

See Also

I even already have a Site Map section for Houot b/c there’s some overlap between the Egodeath theory & Houot’s topics.

Toward a Philosophy of Psychedelic Technology: An Exploration of Fear, Otherness, and Control (Houot, 2019)

Dissert:
Toward a Philosophy of Psychedelic Technology: An Exploration of Fear, Otherness, and Control (Houot, 2019)

Phenomenology for Psychedelic Researchers: A Review of Current Methods & Practices (Houot, 2021)

As always, the title is good to project your wishes onto – the actual content might be disappointing, not useful. Imagine how awesome this article! Do not look at actual article.

Phenomenology for Psychedelic Researchers: A Review of Current Methods & Practices
A. M. Houot, 2021
Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research
18 Pages
https://www.academia.edu/58774354/Phenomenology_for_Psychedelic_Researchers_A_Review_of_Current_Methods_and_Practices
todo: create a new page real quick, seems a GREAT technique

The Psychonaut’s Ship: Pairing Technologies with Psychedelics to Augment User Agency (Houot, 2022)

Article:
The Psychonaut’s Ship: Pairing Technologies with Psychedelics to Augment User Agency (Houot, 2022)
I used Siri Voice 4 (b/c quite smooth) to robo-read aloud to me this article several times.

Rise of the Psychonaut: Maps for Amateurs, Nonscientists and Explorers in the Psychedelic Age of Discovery (Houot, 2025)

Book:
Rise of the Psychonaut: Maps for Amateurs, Nonscientists and Explorers in the Psychedelic Age of Discovery (Houot, 2025)

Search this site for “Houot”:
https://egodeaththeory.org/?s=houot

Site Map > Houot:
https://egodeaththeory.org/nav/#Alan-Houot

Dionysus, the Pilot Who Honors Dionysus and Lives, and the Captain Who Doesn’t Honor Dionysus and Dies

image Search: Dionysus and the Pirates
https://www.google.com/search?q=dionysus+pirates&udm=2

Michael Hoffman, March 28, 2025

Contents:

These links might work on desktop Chrome & Edge only.
todo: add anchor to each heading, re-gen toc

• Motivation for this Page
• Huggins Pours Gasoline on the Battle Between Us “Science” Advocates vs. the Bad, “Religion” Advocates
• Keyboard shortcuts: “transformation gate” variants, eg: Psilocybin cybernetic transformation gate
• Stained Glass Window Panels at Canterbury, “Bible Scenes”
• Field of Mushrooms Stained Glass Window
• Max Freakout Interviewed Jan Irvin in 2009 on Psychonautica Podcast – EPIC!!
• Jewish Views on Astrology in Ancient Times (Video interview video, Chris Brennan, Justin Sledge)
• Our Brand of Mystery Religion:
• Their Brand of Mystery Religion:
• Full Noah’s Ark at Canterbury
• what is that if not a mushroom
• Mission in Line with Rise of the Psychonaut
• Mission & Central Target Audience/ User Persona: Equip Cognitive Scientists for the Psilocybin State
• Doing Opposite of Houot’s Divisiveness
• I Tell You that You Are an Undesirable if You
• Don’t be dogmatic and limited thinking – You Can’t do My Pure Scientist Exploring Unless You Are Pure and Healthy (and Open Minded, Rational, and Mature — Like Me)
• The Divisive Mentality in Psychedelic Science
• Don’t Be Divisive Like Those “Secret Amanita Paradigm” Jerks
• The Egodeath Theory Successfully Bridges & Reconciles Science & Religion; STEM & Spirituality; Explanation & Myth
• Error: Says Thomas Roberts Taught Univ Psychedelics Course Longest; Jerry Brown Actually did
• Do Not Read this Book Unless You Already Use the Narrow Approach I Articulate and Are on My Side Against the Enemies, who are [Long List of All Approaches Ever]
• –> by order of Houot
• Test of Whether Cybermonk Is so Negative
• Bifurcation in the Field and Book, Egged on by Houot & James Kent, matt j, c letheby–: Houot Makes it Personal and Entrenched Sides Fighting Each Other – Yet Tries to Welcome the Uneducated – INCOHERENT, self contradiction strategies
• They Want to Fight: If You Are in the Spirituality Shaman Group-Trip, Mystic, or Cognitive Enhancement crowd, Sacred, Divine, or any other approach, DO NOT READ MY BOOK, YOU ARE THE ENEMY
• The Psychedelic War Between Science vs. Religion -ok, A. M. Whooahhhh “Ego Death & Dionysus are Stupid”
• My Emails with James Kent about Psychedelic Information Theory: Shamanism in the Age of Reason (2010)
• PIT (James Kent, 2010)
• “Either You are Religious, or Secular and Explorative”
• “I Wouldn’t Dismiss Religion, or I’d Be Dogmatic; I’m Open-Minded (on this page)”
• “Ditch the Stupid Religion, Loser”
• “My Boxed-in Motive Is Correct, Scientific, and Open Minded; Your Boxed-in Motive Is Wrong, Religious, and Closed Minded”
• Rational Psychonauts Avoid Anything that Sounds Esoteric or Religious
  • Sounds Like James Kent’s Simple-Minded/ Intellectually Lazy, Scorched-Earth Dismissal
• “A Secular Psychonaut Wouldn’t Want to Explore Religious Realms”
• Houston We Have a Problem: Disrespects Readers
• Rise of the Churlish, Arrogant, Hubristic Psychonaut
• Michael Pollan, Expert Writer on Psychedelic Science: “Don’t write if you know the answer”
• The Churlish, Offensive Online Tone of “I Am Superior: I am a Naturalist, Atheist, Rationalist”
• Rise of the Arrogant Psychonaut
• The Egodeath Theory is Warmly Welcoming to all Little, Unworthy, Muddle-Headed Regular People
• Houot’s Rational Psychonaut God-Complex & “RationalPsychonaut” BAGGAGE – What Are We Signing onto Here, Mystery Package Deal – HARD PASS
• I Advise You, Houot, Stop Overusing Personal Pronouns in Your Advocacy to Me
• What Page # Is “If You Use any Metaphor Other than {Sailing Ship Explorer of External Planet or Space Exploration}, Put This Book Down, It’s Not for You”?
• Pronounced WHOO-OOOAAHH!
• 🤦‍♂️
• Pronunciation of A. M. Houot: Ooh Oh; “If You Are Human, Put this Book Down, It’s Not for You” –> WHOOOOOOAAHHH!! –> Ooh-Oh; A. M. Ooh-Oh

Motivation for this Page

Concept of the focus of this page: I am focusing my target audience in context of Houot’s call for a STEM Scientist Explorer “pure exploration” approach in HARSH opposition to any whiff of childish immature mentally ill spiritual religious esoteric approach to psychedelics. My problem to work out is,

Am I only targeting Cognitive Scientists, only trying to equip THEM to endure the Psilocybin state of loose cognition, telling ONLY them what to do – or what God will make them do – when God pulls them through the transformation gate?

I don’t divide up PEOPLE like Houot does. I think in terms of approaches: a dubious mysticism approach, a dubious Science approach – for ALL audience. Houot usually makes mistake of “us vs them”, he makes it personal:

• We good people use the correct, mature, Science approach.
• You bad ppl use the incorrect, immature, mentally ill, Religion-people / spirituality-people / mystics approach.

Yes, I – the Egodeath theory — do COMPARABLE values and criticisms, but it’s different. I welcome and speak to everyone. I don’t make it personal. I criticise the bad behavior of MICA Deniers and their non sequitur arguments.

To read Houot’s book you have to shove Houot aside when he trries to shove YOU aside. You have to read his book DESPITE his sometimes trying to drive you off because you fail to be pure by his measure. Bizarre, autistic. Churlish, no social common sense.

I joke and criticize everyone, but that’s not fundamental to my thinking; I am basically open to everyone – Houot often strikes tone of immature online “We Atheists vs. those bad, Religion people.” Us-vs-them smack talk and prideful advocacy. The worst, antisocial, unculivated, rude – I am rude and critical but not the same way.

Surely these is nothing; merely surface style? I don’t hear Houot emphasizing reconcilation. I am fundamentally reconciling.

Huggins Pours Gasoline on the Battle Between Us “Science” Advocates vs. the Bad, “Religion” Advocates

No way does my development idea development for the Egodeath theory do that. I am fundamnetally ….

• the Mytheme theory = humanities/ myth/ religion/ spirituality/ mysticism. floating surface, sits on top of the cybernetic theory basis.
• the cybernetic theory = STEM – the foundation basis.

• the cybernetic theory = STEM;
• the Mytheme theory = humanities/ myth/ religion/ spirituality/ mysticism.

See, I am fundmanetally BOTH HALVES: my right leg STEM on ground, lifted is my left, mysticism/myth leg.

Houot comes across as no aptitude for reconciling here. He eggs on the bifurcation of Us Rational Naturalists vs. the Bad Religion Woo People.

He pours gasoline on the flames of Junk “Science” vs. Junk “Religion” perma battle. He takes sides in an immature way.

Keyboard shortcuts: “transformation gate” variants, eg: Psilocybin cybernetic transformation gate

technique demo: here i am building up some long keyboard shortcuts by first defining component shorter keyboard shortcuts:

Psilocybin cybernetic transformation gate
pctg

transformation gate
tg

guarded transformation gate
gtg

guarded Psilocybin cybernetic transformation gate
gpctg

cybernetic transformation gate
ctg

cybernetic
cyb

pass through gate
ptg

Psilocybin transformation gate
pxg

cybernetic Psilocybin transformation gate
cptg

How to End the Mysticism Wars in Psychedelic Science
Chris Letheby, Jaipreet Mattu, and Eric Hochstein
2024
Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Psychoactive Drug Use
https://www.academia.edu/124791282/How_to_End_the_Mysticism_Wars_in_Psychedelic_Science

[5:26 pm Mar. 28, 2025] AFTER I created & uploaded here & then sent that picture crop url to R., I AFTERWARDS looked for mushroom in that crop, certainly not expecting one, b/c I didn’t see one during discovering the pretty window and croppping it the past few minutes.

Then I texted to R.:

“just messin, wanted to send u pretty pic of altered state turmoil ark w/ calming dove, then i thought there better be msh – j/k but — take a look at lower left. ez like falling over a log“

remote link to full pic
https://www.canterbury-archaeology.org.uk/wp-content/gallery/bible-window/4624377323.jpg
https://www.canterbury-archaeology.org.uk/bible-windows

Stained Glass Window Panels at Canterbury, “Bible Scenes”

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Sower – picture from: By Jules & Jenny from Lincoln, UK – Canterbury Cathedral, window nXV detail, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80090623

Features:

• top tree is YI, with {cut right trunk}.
• left hand points 4 fingers up at Left, branching part of tree, and L foot is under that.
• right hand points down to ground.
• bottom tree is YI, visually {cut right branch} cross-behind.

Field of Mushrooms Stained Glass Window

https://mg.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andro_Antenatenany – got it! giant 1.7 MB jpg, 3 KB x 3 KB px on my drive, from Wiki in the Malagsy language of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar big island east of Africa.

Have I seen this at Entheos gallery??

Features:

• orange left mushroom-tree: {cut right trunk}.
• orange left mushroom-tree: {cut left trunk}; symmetry between the two trees.
• orange stem, blue crown mushroom-tree: {cut right trunk} which is a form of YI branching form mushroom-tree.
• white, bottom mushroom-tree: no trunk.

Features:

• {cut right trunk}
• YI form, therefore.
• Noted features for Huggins’ Foraging: Section 3: Schematized trees:
• Trident branches support crown:
• L branch = possibilism-thinking
• R branch = eternalism-thinking
• Middle branch = balanced combination; qualified possibilism-thinking

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/
Section 3: Schematized trees
https://egodeaththeory.org/2025/02/17/y-branches-under-mushroom-tree-cap-two-legs-for-psychedelic-virtual-freewill/#3-Schematized-Trees

• I have seen this “field of mushrooms” before – is it in my WordPress gallery? doubt.

I have seen – from Jan Irvin? the bottom middle: “field of mushrooms”.

I think Jan Irvin mentions that picture in the interview w/ Max Freakout.

Jan Irvin SAID IN THE INTERVIEW HE ONLY PUBLISHED 1/10 OF HIS COLLECTION IN THE GALLERY IN The Holy Mushroom.

Max Freakout Interviewed Jan Irvin in 2009 on Psychonautica Podcast – EPIC!! 🤯

I listened yesterday Mar. 27, 2025 for 2nd time, 1st time that I recall listening to that episode is is Dec. 2024.

Great episode.

Jan Irvin has just finished writing The Holy Mushroom: Evidence of Mushrooms in Judeo-Christianity (Jan Irvin, 2008) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1439215170

Jan Irvin told Max Freakout that he had finished some edition of AstroSham – either “2005/2006” 1st Edition, or, 2009 2nd Edition.

Jan Irvin
ji

Jewish Views on Astrology in Ancient Times (Video interview video, Chris Brennan, Justin Sledge)

brennan’s ch is awesome in that it has TIMESTAMPS praise the Lord.

01:07:30 Astrology and Fate become entwined
01:08:17 Apocalyptic Judaism
01:10:58 Debates in Christianity about astrology and fate <=== — transcript of this whole section :

Debates in Christianity about astrology and fate

CB:

“… even though there’s that story in Matthew that’s using astrology basically in order to put a foundation under Christianity within contemporary Mediterranean culture by saying astrology confirms that this guy is actually the Messiah or this guy is the son of God.

“After the first century, it seems like there became these debates within Christianity.

“And later Christian authors had to find ways to kind of downplay that story because there was a theological issue that became front and center for several centuries about astrology being associated with fate but the concept of free will and choice being theologically very important.

“And therefore, a lot of Christian polemics ended up being directed against astrology because of its association with fate and predetermination and things like that.

“And it seems like we get some of that in the Jewish tradition in this time period at the same time.

“So what is the time frame of the Talmud? And what is the significance of that in terms of Jewish culture and literature?

JS: “Yeah. So after the destruction of the temple.”

/ end of section/transcript

As I yelled aloud in other video against Brennan — and then Sledge said the exact same words that I just said:

ALL brands of religion disparaged the other brands as “they make you a slave of fate, imprisoned in cosmic heimarmene, only OUR brand transcends Fatedness 😑”

Our Brand of Mystery Religion:
🏆😑👍
🌌
🪐

Their Brand of Mystery Religion:
🌌
🪐
💥😞👎

Citation: Cosmology and Fate in Gnosticism and Graeco-Roman Antiquity: Under Pitiless Skies (Nicola Denzey Lewis, 2013) https://www.amazon.com/Cosmology-Fate-Gnosticism-Graeco-Roman-Antiquity/dp/9004245480/
nl13

mystery religion
mr

Section of the interview, with transcript:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i4uI7gFEpw&t=233s — 111

I did not know that this video is w/ Chris Brennan, astrology history book author, not only w/ Dr. Justin Sledge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i4uI7gFEpw — like the 2013 book by Nicola Denzy Lewis that I posted a great tight mini-review in 2014 at Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Cosmology-Fate-Gnosticism-Graeco-Roman-Antiquity/dp/9004245480/
Not expensive like the $145 ripoff book by Wouter “Star Destroyer” Hanegraaff that doesn’t even come with stars!; just $200.
hahaha Brill, like Dr. Justin Sledge jokes about 🤑💰 – Why is tuition so high these days? 🤔🤷‍♂️

“Cosmology and Fate in Gnosticism and Graeco-Roman Antiquity: Under Pitiless Skies (Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies, 81)
by Nicola Denzey Lewis (Author)
5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars (1) <– only a single lone autistic dork reviewed it?! oh its me😞

“In Cosmology and Fate in Gnosticism and Graeco-Roman Antiquity, Nicola Denzey Lewis dismisses Hans Jonas’ mischaracterization of second-century Gnosticism as a philosophically-oriented religious movement built on the perception of the cosmos as negative or enslaving.

“A focused study on the concept of astrological fate in

• “Gnostic” writings including
• the Apocryphon of John, the recently-discovered
• Gospel of Judas,
• Trimorphic Protennoia, and the
• Pistis Sophia,

this book reexamines their language of “enslavement to fate (Gk: heimarmene)” from its origins in

• Greek Stoicism, its deployment by the
• apostle Paul, to its later use by
• a variety of second-century intellectuals (both Christian and non-Christian).

“Denzey Lewis thus offers an informed and revisionist conceptual map of the ancient cosmos, its influence, and all those who claimed to be free of its potentially pernicious effects.”

/ end blurb

keyboard shortcuts:

Amazon
amz

Academia.edu
acae

Full Noah’s Ark at Canterbury

what is that if not a mushroom

But there’s no way that artist painted a mushroom, or else there’d be other windows there next to it that also have mushrooms — WHICH THERE ARE.

When you see the threat that is the the uncontrollable source of control-thoughts, what to do? Be specific, what are you then made to do?

How does egoic freewill thinking always remain, but now, qualified to be stable?

Benefit from Houot’s errors in not bringing together all approaches. Do opposite of Houot approach, in my advocacy of a Loose Cognitive Science approach informed by the Mytheme theory.

Bridging the Two Parties that Want to Fight

Removed the deservedly scathing analysis from my Rise of the Psychonaut book review page, moved it here, to transform it into CONSTRUCTIVE LESSONS LEARNED.

May I be not like that.

Mission in Line with Rise of the Psychonaut

“Charting a travel map”; defining my own field of Loose Cognitive Science; defining my own audience of Loose Cognitive Scientists

I doubt Ooh-Oh’s emphasis on the “travel explorer” metaphor, my assessment of the cultural situation: 

I’m the only one who knows what an actual “Cognitive Science/ Cognitive Phenomenology approach” really is, and actually uses that approach.”  

My imagined target audience for my theory of mental transformation is “Cognitive Scientists”.

The field of Cognitive Science is doing Cognitive Science wrong and doesn’t know what [switching to my term] Loose Cognitive Science, actually means.

What the field of so-called “Cognitive Science” is doing is just merely reductionist Neuroscience pretending to be Cognitive – an empty Marketing label.

As Ooh-Oh calls for, I am now mapping and charting — I am packaging and final-drafting my existing map & chart — the Psilocybin control-transformation experience, for an audience of Psychedelic Cognitive Scientists (I am defining what that needs to mean) and for a general audience,

to suitably equip and help people endure and cope with the {gate guard} {shadow dragon monster} and {pass through the gate}, 

employing and explaining religious myth & medieval art motifs as analogies serving to clarify and explain, 

but the needed scientific map is not based on myth; the useful explanatory model (“map”) is based on direct STEM-type explanatory model communication.  

Religious myth is analogies describing Psilocybin experience (that’s where religious myth comes from).

A map of the Psilocybin transformation experience must leverage myth as a map guiding people through Psilocybin transformation.

https://egodeaththeory.org/2025/02/25/idea-development-page-25/#Equip-Cog-Scientists-for-Psilocybin-State

Mission & Central Target Audience/ User Persona: Equip Cognitive Scientists for the Psilocybin State

Now, my driving mission, most of all, is to equip Cognitive Scientists to endure and use the altered state, so that they can explore it for Science.  

That is my defined target audience.  If I can provide for their needs, that covers everyone’s needs.  

That’s my strategic audience focus, who I can most relate to & provide for, in terms that they relate to.

Book: Rise of the Psychonauts, even though my official focused mission — equip Cog Sci for scientific exploration —  exactly aligns with (Houot) the author’s concept.

Mission, in line with Houot’s book: 

Provide a useful explanatory model of control transformation in the Psilocybin state, 

to enable Cognitive Scientists to generally explore and research cognitive phenomenology in the Psilocybin state, 

including explaining religious myth and medieval art motifs as analogies describing personal control-model transformation driven by the altered state.

What looks like “loss of control” prior to passing through the transformation gate, from the point of view afterwards looks like control transformation; transformation of the mental model of personal control & of branching possibilities with steering power.

I have stable control — if God wills it.

Doing Opposite of Houot’s Divisiveness

Dubious “travel explorer” metaphor overused, what else you got?

As book club participlants said, the book seems to use a heavy-handed over-emphasis specifically on the analogy of “travel exploration“.

Doesn’t that contradict Oh Ow’s disparagement of the “trip” metaphor?

In my experience, which probably is much greater than Oh Ow’s experience, I have NEVER used the metaphor of “travel exploration”.

(Compare: Participlants said “I never encountered space-entities like Oh Ow focuses on.”)

Mushroom Formats

How much ground mushrooms it’s possible to pack into a double-zero gelcap (half gram),

and good chocolate format

I Tell You that You Are an Undesirable if You

• never ingested psychedelics
• take psychedelics for therapeutic purposes – if there is anything wrong w/ you, do not read this book. It is for the sane and healthy; other people are not welcome here. only for PURE explorers; this book is only for the Pure people. Sick people do not do pure exploration, so, do not read this book unless you are perfectly well in all ways – you fail to meet my criteria.
• take psychedelics for recreational purposes
• take psychedelics for religious purposes
• take psychedelics for spiritual growth purposes
• take psychedelics for personal growth purposes
• take psychedelics for cognitive enhancement purposes <– go away, losers!
• take psychedelics for creativity-inspirational purposes <- you are the enemy
• take psychedelics for self-actualizing purposes

“With that said, my message will not resonate with everyone.” He doesn’t even tell his message to everyone – like Jesus, he only came to save those who already follow him.

Houot emphat’ly makes it personal. vs critique limits of approaches.

Don’t be dogmatic and limited thinking – You Can’t do My Pure Scientist Exploring Unless You Are Pure and Healthy (and Open Minded, Rational, and Mature — Like Me)

ch 2 26:00 “ONLY AFTER YOU HAVE REACHED A STATE OF RELATIVE WELLNESS PRIOR TO CONSUMPTION, ONLY THEN CAN THEY ADOPT AN EXPLORATION ROLE, / ARE YOU CAPABLE OF EXPLORATION. There’s no correct way OR motive to take a psychedelics; and supposing so is dogmatic and represents limited thinking.”

— UNBELIEVABLE Houot, and incoherent, WHERE IS YOUR MOTHER TO EDIT YOU, you need to work out your own demons and contradictions, you keep contradicting yourself. Reconcile your inner conflicts, Houot, lecturing people incoherently.

I , Michael Hoffman , have a history of dysfunctional perfectionism, incl beating up on myself.

DYSFUNCTIONAL PERFECTIONISM/ IDEALISM by Houot. result is churlish, clumsy, ROUGH HEWN technologist, no P R skills.

Matt Johnson & Chris Letheby beating up on mystics. pushing their Correct wway, their Way of Hardcore Materialism – rational healthy ppl use our way. Divisive

The Divisive Mentality in Psychedelic Science

Don’t Be Divisive Like Those “Secret Amanita Paradigm” Jerks

I, the Egodeath theory, criticize but I build bridges. am i like Houot?

Let’s have the engineers run the Marketing dept.

How to Win Friends and Influence People https://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/0671027034/ —

The Egodeath Theory Successfully Bridges & Reconciles Science & Religion; STEM & Spirituality; Explanation & Myth

he later weakly makes reconcilation noises, too late.

critique should aim towards reconcile. I condemn this and that, and, I reconcile to fix the bifurcation and reach integration after correction.

Houot’s error — that of both sides in the fight — is to my benefit, ok. shrug

Error: Says Thomas Roberts Taught Univ Psychedelics Course Longest; Jerry Brown Actually did

ch 3 14:00

Do Not Read this Book Unless You Already Use the Narrow Approach I Articulate and Are on My Side Against the Enemies, who are [Long List of All Approaches Ever]

Ooh-Oh, pronounced WHOO-OOOAAHH!, massively botches his logic and ends up rejecting & turning away 150% of all categories of people on Earth.

Please put this book down if you’ve never ingested psychedelics or if you take them for therapeutic, recreational, religious, spiritual growth, personal growth, cognitive enhancement, creativity-inspirational, or self-actualizing purposes. It’s not for you

With that said, my message will not resonate with everyone.

p. 10

Yessir ok,

📘 –> 🗑
by order of Houot 🤷‍♂️

also Houot: i’m here to help you even if you are uneducated. Incoherent approach. Imagine him making instructional video: you are not allowed to hear my advocacy if you don’t already fully agree with the approach I advocate.

Test of Whether Cybermonk Is so Negative

Have I had the attitude:

Please do not study the Egodeath theory if you’ve never ingested psychedelics or if you take them for therapeutic, recreational, religious, spiritual growth, personal growth, cognitive enhancement, creativity-inspirational, or self-actualizing purposes. It’s not for you.

With that said, my message will not resonate with everyone.

Bifurcation in the Field and Book, Egged on by Houot & James Kent, matt j, c letheby–: Houot Makes it Personal and Entrenched Sides Fighting Each Other – Yet Tries to Welcome the Uneducated – INCOHERENT, self contradiction strategies

Houot did not invent the spilt. He eggs it on to exacerbate it, p. 10.

The page 10 disaster reflects the perpetuation of war between junk “science” vs junk “religion” approaches, but he makes it personal: the scientists vs the religionists. if you —

error 2: he classifies cognitive enhancement with stupid mystic shaman bad approach fWR WTF doesn’t even divide sensibly. trip is bad, explore is good. but personalizes: trip metaphro users are bad, go away; explorer metaphor users are good.

I advocate 1 approach of 100, therefore, I tell 99 % of PEOPLE: do not read my book.

To describe my approach I am advocating – , I shall identify the 150% (( his categs don’t make sense) of people who should not read my book.

I am not advocating this approach to everyone; I am ONLY advocating this approach to the 1% of people – after I drove off incoherently defined set of 150% of ppl — who already agree with me.

SUCH PERSUASION TECHNIQUE!

this keyboard is litrally falling apart under my fingers, mac butterfly garbage worst keyboard ever, too noisy for the classroom, too – embarr.

The Mysticism Wars – aggressive Matt Johnson and Chris Letheby when Letheby is not tripping and telling us “only mind exists”

bifurc in Letheby’s head

The ridiculous extremist materilaist nsci scinegi scientist materialist rationalists vs the woo, wooly headed mystics – extremist charaicature.

They Want to Fight: If You Are in the Spirituality Shaman Group-Trip, Mystic, or Cognitive Enhancement crowd, Sacred, Divine, or any other approach, DO NOT READ MY BOOK, YOU ARE THE ENEMY

quote p 10 insane list of bad people/approaches that must not be used ~

then says “that approach is ok, ” – but do not read this book, you are the enemy.

The Psychedelic War Between Science vs. Religion 🤜💥🤛 -ok, A. M. Whooahhhh “Ego Death & Dionysus are Stupid”

Thank you for the opportunity for the Egodeath theory to be the bridge that you failed to build. I am learning from and leveraging Houot’s error and failure to integrate the two “incompatible” approaches or realms of concern.

My page:
Moving Past Mysticism: Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism Provides Scientific Basis, Superseding “Mysticism, Meditation, & Psychotherapy” Framework
Includes section about article:
How to End the Mysticism Wars in Psychedelic Science (Letheby 2024)

Alan Houot says there’s no right way to use psychedelics, and yet, also says the opposite, contradicting himself, not presenting a reconciled package that’s integrated.

p 10: 99% of readers, do not read my book. later, he is reconciliatory, “we should open mind re religion” – CONTRADICTING HIMSELF.

Clumsy, incoherent, inconsistent.

James Kent treated my Myth decoding as garbage anathema against his anti-psychedelic, demonization of religion/myth/ psychedelics.

Transcendent Knowledge podcast with Max Freakout & Cyberdisciple:

• Episode 22, February 23, 2020 – James Kent (DoseNation) part 6
• Episode 21, February 16, 2020 – James Kent (DoseNation) part 5
• Episode 20, February 9, 2020 – James Kent (DoseNation) part 4
• Episode 19, Feb 2, 2020 – James Kent (DoseNation) part 3
• Episode 18, Jan 24, 2020 – James Kent (DoseNation) part 2
• Episode 17, Jan 14, 2020 – James Kent (DoseNation) part 1

My Emails with James Kent about Psychedelic Information Theory: Shamanism in the Age of Reason (2010)

I emailed James Kent again the other day a few years ago (vs. in 2006 when I reviewed Kent’s PIT book draft for him):

Me: “Hey Kent, check out my decoding of the real referent of religious myth!”

Kent: “Myth? Yuck! Religion is stupidity.”

Thus was born my quip, “Psychedelics make people closed-minded.”

I hate mystic writings mode, but I do not declare war in that bifurcated way.

I criticize Cog Sci as much as Mysticism.

I criticize the WAY science is done, and the WAY religion is done.

I don’t stupidly, in lazy low IQ way, blanket glorify / dismissal or dumbly take pre-fabricated sides:

“SCIENCE IS GOOD, RELIGION IS BAD”
or
“Religion is good; Science is bad.”

Search this site for “Psychedelic Information Theory”:
https://egodeaththeory.org/?s=%22Psychedelic+Information+Theory%22

PIT (James Kent, 2010)

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Psychedelic Information Theory: Shamanism in the Age of Reason (James Kent, 2010) https://www.amazon.com/Psychedelic-Information-Theory-Shamanism-Reason/dp/1453760172/
jk10

Psychedelic Information Theory: Shamanism in the Age of Reason
James Kent, October 5, 2010
https://www.amazon.com/Psychedelic-Information-Theory-Shamanism-Reason/dp/1453760172/ –

Blurb: sounds like the typical “Cognitive Neuroscience Minus Cognitive” approach:

“Psychedelic Information Theory is a formal analysis of the physical mechanisms underlying hallucination, shamanic ritual, and expanded states of consciousness.”

[no telling what anyone means by ‘consciousness’; not my cog cybernetic phen’y]

“Written by James L. Kent, this text was researched for over 20 years and includes over 200 references and 31 images related to the latest science in the diverse fields of pharmacology, shamanism, and perception.

“As a succinct yet comprehensive formal analysis of the nonlinear dynamics of hallucination and shamanic ritual, Psychedelic Information Theory is destined to become the modern textbook on psychedelic phenomena.

“Chapters include information on

• the physiology of perception,
• types of visual hallucination,
• psychedelic pharmacology,
• psychedelic neuroplasticity,
• chaos theory,
• shamanic therapy,
• shamanic sorcery, and
• group mind phenomena related to psychedelic consciousness.

“Psychedelic Information Theory will prove, no doubt, to be an important work primarily because it provides researchers, in both the sciences and humanities, with numerous new avenues down which to investigate.

“PIT provides us with a serious, and in many respects successful, recalibration of the different psychedelic knowledge bases.

In great respect to the author, I believe PIT will attract both plaudits and criticism with equal fervour and, in doing so, help proliferate serious psychedelic research for some time to come.”

– Rob Dickens, PsyPressUK.com Review, December 2010

“In his new book, Psychedelic Information Theory: Shamanism in the Age of Reason, James Kent has attempted to describe both the experience and underlying mechanisms of consciousness, in the language of classical wave mechanics, with terms like neural oscillators, periodic drivers, wave entrainment, resonance and coherence.

“His book offers the first steps in developing a more refined and quantifiable theory and terminology of psychedelic action.

“It suggests many rich opportunities for further research that are bound to reveal some pragmatic and novel applications.

“Not since “The Invisible Landscape,” by the McKenna brothers, have I found a book so original and propitious.”

– Jedi Mind Traveler, Evolver.net Interview, January 2011

“James L. Kent has proven himself to be the ‘Mythbuster‘ of the New Psychedelic Age.

“His book, Psychedelic Information Theory is the everyman’s guide to inner consciousness, unraveling the scientific foundations of altered states.

“PIT challenged my views on the psychedelic experience: I might not agree with some of the conclusions, but I have a firmer grip on the basics because of it.

“Kent helps outline the mechanics of the mind, but his reductionist approach also leaves room for further mysteries to grow.”- Rak Razam, author of Aya: A Shamanic Odyssey, November 2010

“Kent’s clear trail through volumes of research gave me a solid understanding of how rod and cone vision, phosphenes, the visual information processing rate, and the brain’s pattern-recognition function all come together or come apart to modulate hallucinatory states.

“Kent deserves a place next to Grof on the psychonaut’s, scientist’s, and psychologist’s bookshelf.”

– Sheldon Norberg, author of Healing Houses, Erowid.org Review, October 2010

/ end blurb for PIT

“Either You are Religious, or Secular and Explorative”

Houot writes:

“Of course, we’ll see some people who take psychedelics for recreational, religious, and therapeutic reasons convert to the more secular common explorative motive proposed here.”

“When I say secular psychonaut, what I mean is that your religious beliefs or any other strongly held belief system does not spill over into your explorative use of psychedelics.”

“I Wouldn’t Dismiss Religion, or I’d Be Dogmatic; I’m Open-Minded (on this page)”

“Atheism, or a disbelief that a God or God’s exist, is for me just as dogmatic as mainstream religion.

“I approach psychedelics as an agnostic, that is, someone who does not know either way, but is open to considering all possibilities.

“While my approach and I think any explorers approach to psychedelics should lean secular, I am at least open to the idea that that which I encounter just might be religious or turn out to be communication with God, gods, angels, or demons.

[Page 91]

“Terrence McKenna says: “I call myself an explorer rather than a scientist, because the area that I’m looking at contains insufficient data to support even the dream of being a science.” …” 

[page 92 top]

McK:

“The mindset that I always bring to it is simply exploratory and Baconian–the mapping and gathering of facts.”

— footnote 23 : McKenna 1991, page 36. 

1991 book: The archaic revival: speculations on psychedelic mushrooms, the Amazon, virtual reality, UFOs, evolution, shamanism, the rebirth of the goddess, and the end of history.

[Page 94]

Houot writes:

“Most ordinary folks won’t know how to operate let alone interpret the results of fancy laboratory equipment.

“They can, however, enter visionary places, look around, and tell the rest of us what that realm is like: how the experience unfolded, what was possible in that realm, what kinds of things they saw, what were their entities, and if so , what did they look like, what did they say, what did they want?”

It’s just angel of God saying sacrifice your only son as an offering on altar of sticks, fire, blade, to pass through the gateway:

todo: put side by side w/ St Martin Entry Jerusalem > finger shapes – if not done somewhere already:

“We don’t know what these substances are fully capable of because little research has been done on their visionary effects in a rigorous way.

“We are at the beginning of the psychedelic Renaissance, and the same can be said regarding exploratory research of psychedelics visions.

“Ditch the Stupid Religion, Loser”

“The shift in mindset from recreational, religious, or therapeutic to explorative and scientifically-minded is as much conceptual as it is methodical.

“Ask yourself what you want to get out of psychedelics, for that determines the frame of mind with which you enter these experiences.”

“My Boxed-in Motive Is Correct, Scientific, and Open Minded; Your Boxed-in Motive Is Wrong, Religious, and Closed Minded”

“My vision for the future of psychedelic research is to send astronaut-like explorers out into visionary realms, free from religious, therapeutic, or other boxed-in motives and to engage in pure exploration of these states with open minds.”

“I want to see the exploration, more explicit, direct, and becoming an additional focus of psychedelic science now and in the future.

“I want to see more people embrace the psychonaut explorer mindset as an alternative to the other motive-inspired mindsets people have long had for taking psychedelics.

“I want people to come back with priceless observational data about their journeys to make future users travels safer, more predictable, and as a result, to reduce fear of these experiences.

“I want modern psychedelic users to think about where the future of psychedelic use and research will lead.

“I want you to think about how you can contribute to our collective understanding of these other worldly dimensions in meaningful ways.”

/ end condensed excerpts from
Rise of the Arrogant Psychonaut by A. M.
Whoooooo-oooaahhh! I can’t believe you wrote that!!

Rational Psychonauts Avoid Anything that Sounds Esoteric or Religious

Sounds Like James Kent’s Simple-Minded/ Intellectually Lazy, Scorched-Earth Dismissal

  p 87:

Houot writes:

“Rational psychonauts distance themselves from ordinary, psychedelic users, and psychonauts.

” Their science-based approach is thinking rationally and skeptically to understand and interpret psychedelic experiences. 

“They avoid anything that sounds esoteric, religious or dogmatic.” – dummy Houot: what if I am a theorist successfully delivering an explanatory model explaining the actual nature of religious myth and religious transcendent experience? In that case, using “Science”, I explain myth & religion – not “avoid”. Your word ‘avoid’ is ambiguous, avoid in what sense/way? You are writing statements about religion here, shouldn’t you avoid that topic, because you are being irrational? where do you draw your line? Not articulate enough, “avoid anything that soundds religious”.

Houot writes:

“Rational psychonauts intellectualize their subjective, psychedelic experiences, visions, and the cognitive and physiological mechanisms underlying the production of visions, thinking scientifically and philosophically about the phenomenon and trying to figure out what’s going on overall.

“Researchers [pay attention to ] recreational users versus psychonauts, but they overlook rational psychonauts and their motives.

“Reddit members [of the /RationalPsychonaut forum] subscribe to the rational psychonaut credo :

“A community for sensible discussion of the science of altered states.

“For people interested in exploring in our realms without subscribing to the woo surrounding the topic.”

[page 88]

“Psychedelics cause some people to become mentally unstable or make them believe they met God, they are God, or they’re a messiah with a message.”

  [which does sound like the author, Houot.]

“In accordance with rational psychonaut principles, my highly rational outlook in addition to my scientific and philosophical training grounds me when venturing into visionary states elicited by psychedelics.”

Translation: Hubris: I retain full control of my intentions, because I am rational unlike lesser people.

[Page 89]

“I don’t think that people who take psychedelics for recreational, religious or therapeutic motives are irrational.

“Theologians, gurus, and monks, for example, can appear extremely logical concerning religious and religious and spiritual belief systems.

“I defend [read: disparage] other people’s reasons for taking psychedelics and the ways in which they make sense of them.

“The rational psychonaut approach is essentially what I would like to see more of, but we can do better.”

Houot here equates religious = irrational:

“Secular psychonaut is in line with a non-religious approach to psychedelics which includes undertones of rationality

The widespread secularism found in science and academic disciplines inspired this idea of a secular approach since science and religion butted heads 500 years ago”

Houot uses false dichotomy of unimaginative ‘science’ – conception of ‘science vs. religion’.

That low-grade, poor-quality opposition & false dich got rid of – per Wouter Hanegraaff – esotericism & Psilocybin (entheogenic esotericism) in the dust-up, 1687 Newton Princip, threw discarded psychedelic esotericism.

Not that the Egodeath theory = entheogenic esotericism

The Egodeath theory REPLACES entheogenic esotericism, and replaces common-core mysticism and perennialism, as a communication style and indeterminate grab-bag, messy muddled OBSCURANTISM.

The Egodeath theory IS THE ENEMY OF OBSCURANTISM.

“A Secular Psychonaut Wouldn’t Want to Explore Religious Realms”

Houot writes:

“I like the term secular psychonaut but what if someone religiously inclined wants to explore “religious realms” or “religious experiences“?

“I doubt that this would happen, but who knows, everybody is different.”

[Page 90]

“People can explore psychedelic realms and be religious; yet I don’t consider people who already practice a particular belief system to be explorative because they found what works for them and they’re unlikely to change if indeed they’re genuine believers.”

Believer, by the band Blizzard of Ozz, lyrics by whatsisname: bassist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6U-id_iUwQ —

I believe in transformation from possibilism to eternalism.

Houston We Have a Problem: Disrespects Readers

Houot would never talk down to the audience of his dissertation and the two professional article to peers, after that.

But switching to his imagined audience of little people, he is 100% self-defeating. Therefore he needs an editor, when trying to write for a popular audience.

To remember how to pronounce “Houot”:
“Do not read this book if you ever used any of these purposes for psychedelics:”
Reaction: WHOOOOOAAAHHH! 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️
Whoooo-oooooh!
Who-Oh
“Ooh-Oh” <–

I am looking forward to the 2nd Edition of this book with page 10 violently torn out by a professional editor, and removing all indicators of “I am talking down to you” that are scattered throughout the book.

An author could not erect a bigger barrier for their own success. Take gun, aim at foot, pull trigger.

Rise of the Churlish, Arrogant, Hubristic Psychonaut

“Do not read this book if you ever used any of these purposes for psychedelics: [lists every known purpose].”

“Hey everyone in the world, go away, you are not worthy of my removing of your ignorance.”

— Houot, entire page 10, & scattered throughout book

Did Houot take writing lessons from the lying, duplicitous, censorious, total jerk Wasson, p. 180, SOMA?

This is just one example; see my 2006 article for more examples of butthead, rude, total jerk, pompous ass Wasson:
Wasson and Allegro on the Tree of Knowledge as Amanita

Con artist Wasson tries to bully people into denying mushroom-trees, which Wasson plainly knows of course are mushrooms, per Ruck Committee’s leak, “Wasson’s conclusion” in “Daturas for the Virgin” p. 56.

Houot is unaccustomed to writing for the unwashed masses of uneducated who lack an advanced degree.

He MAKES SURE to explicitly let everyone know:

“I am talking down to you. I will inform you for the first time. You should start thinking scientifically and rationally. I will teach you how.”

Are Houot’s Ibogaine podcasts so insulting, explicitly talking down to the audience?

Michael Pollan, Expert Writer on Psychedelic Science: “Don’t write if you know the answer”

Houot needs to take writing lessons from Michael Pollan, on how to write for a mass popular audience.

https://michaelpollan.com/about/ –

“In 2003, Pollan was appointed the John S. and James L. Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism

“and the director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism.

“In 2017, he was appointed Professor of the Practice of Non-fiction at Harvard and the university’s first Lewis Chan Lecturer in the Arts.

“In 2020, along with Dacher Keltner and others, he co-founded the
UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics.

“The center conducts research using psychedelics to investigate cognition, perception and emotion and their biological bases in the human brain.

“In addition to teaching, he lectures widely on … psychedelic science.”

The Churlish, Offensive Online Tone of “I Am Superior: I am a Naturalist, Atheist, Rationalist”

‘Churlish’ means rude, boorish, lacking in civility or graciousness, unfriendly, unpleasant.

If I post a book review in format below, the first Con would be warning:

Houot tells everyone to not read his book, and he insults the hell out of everyone and talks down like a mo-fo, belittling the reader.

The first thing a professional editor would do is burn page 10 with {fire}: p 10.

I blame the atheist poor P.R. style and the “I am a Rationalist, I am superior” rude internet tone, that he channels. Do not write a book with the worst tone of online smug agressive self-proud “naturalist, atheist, rationalist” tone.

That is the repellent hurdle you have to be charitable toward.

Houot demands that you be charitable toward his hamfisted rude self-defeating attacking of all audiences.

Rise of the Arrogant Psychonaut

Could you talk DOWN any more, oh great master [and eager to present yourself as Great Master over the little minions].

Joke idea: post a page that talks down to some imagined little followers of the Egodeath theory , like Whoo-oooahh talks down to his fantasized little audience – and it IS little, since p. 10 at start shooed all the filthy dirty types of readers, “Put this book down, IT’S NOT FOR THE LIKES OF YOU.”

my Marketing dept advises me to leverage Whooooaaahhh’s error in my favor:

The Egodeath theory is superior because it welcomes all of the little people, it is welcoming to all of the little, irrational, addled-mind followers of my great self.

The Egodeath Theory is Warmly Welcoming to all Little, Unworthy, Muddle-Headed Regular People

I will teach you, my little readers, how to start thinking and how to start being rational, in a more friendly way of stooping and lowering myself to deign to remove your ignorance, than Houot’s writing style.

He picks up this adversarial, us-vs.-them attitude up from the Reddit self-proud and eager to let you know, Reddit forum “RationalPsychonaut” reddit group. (idk the lingo)

Houot’s poor writing tone reminds me of the online “basement” (socially unskilled) atheist community (which no longer exists since Richard Carrier single-handedly blew it up in a couple conferences some years ago), the death knell, “the new atheists” who killed-off atheism, it’s now history.

Carrier single-handedly killed the atheism community by dragging-in toxic “new atheism”. I revisited a few times, unclear what happened – an infiltration of alien agendas, coopting and then killing the host.

Deathly fatal parasitism; New Atheism destroyed atheism in the course of trying to coopt and take over and steer in some completely other direction.

Dislikeable tone, of the Rational Psychonauts: they should be mad at Whoooooaaahhhh! for poorly representing their loudly belittling attitude.

We Rational Psychonauts are better than you, and we’re eager to trumpet our attitude.

Houot’s Rational Psychonaut God-Complex & “RationalPsychonaut” BAGGAGE – What Are We Signing onto Here, Mystery Package Deal – HARD PASS

“A messiah with a message”, Houot accuses – look in the mirror, Whoo-ooaaah!

I Advise You, Houot, Stop Overusing Personal Pronouns in Your Advocacy to Me

Tip: Avoid pronouns. we, us, our, you, me, I — be careful with these words!

You didn’t address professionals with “you” in your two post-dissertation articles.

This book uses a clumsy, awkward, over-personal approach that you are not practiced at, and it flops and backfires, talking down to your readers, many of whom can lecture you.

“Me, I, you” – it’s aggression.

Oooh-Oww really lets his disrespect for the audience, and his self-aggrandizement show through LOUD AND CLEAR by overuse of “I” and “you”.

He’s trying to ADVOCATE his approach by INSULTING the readership directly. How’s that gonna work?

Is there any possibility you could have a professional editor rush a revised 2nd edition? Well no, take a lot of time to fix this framing.

What Page # Is “If You Use any Metaphor Other than {Sailing Ship Explorer of External Planet or Space Exploration}, Put This Book Down, It’s Not for You”?

Pronounced WHOO-OOOAAHH!

p. 10

Incredible, garbled, insulting, self-contradictory, disaster.

No editor on Earth would approve this framing.

🤦‍♂️

I can’t believe what I’m reading.

This is the most adversarial, reader-attacking passage I have ever read.

Then, in case you mistook him as saying “this book is for everyone”, after he’s gunned down 150% of the total possible readership groups, he cautions:

“With that said, my message will not resonate with everyone.”

Oh thanks, I must have misread the entire page above as saying “This book articulates an approach that’s useful and inviting for all people who have emphasized any approach.”

I thought that above the page said that this book will resonate with everyone. Thanks for clarify my misreading.

Pronunciation of A. M. Houot: Ooh Oh; “If You Are Human, Put this Book Down, It’s Not for You” –> WHOOOOOOAAHHH!! –> Ooh-Oh; A. M. Ooh-Oh

[March 22, 2025]

Ooh-Oh: “If you use any metaphor / motive other than my narrow pet metaphor {external world-exploration in a ship}, then PUT THIS BOOK DOWN – IT’S NOT FOR YOU. –>

Every reader gasps: WHOOOOOOAAHHHH! –> Ooh-Oh.

For this page of the book, Houot BADLY needs an editor / P.R. person – what an awful, immature, self-defeating, ill-advised construction! Bad move! Terrible P. R.

Definitely strike that passage and entirely reframe it, in rev 2 of book.

Self-defeating Houot. His own worst enemy.

Also Ooh-Oh: “I slightly question these other metaphors/approaches, they are dogmatic“

LOL! Pot, kettle, black.

He outright demonizes the divine; Transcendent Knowledge; myth as analogy, and then calls other approaches / other writers “dogmatic”.

Who’s dogmatic, Houot?!

Foolish dismissal out of hand, of ANY AND ALL myth-type approaches, as a sweeping class generalization. Immature. Brittle thinking. Black-and-white FALSE DICHOTOMY, intellectually lazy.

It’s lazy and easy for Psychedelic Information Theory author James Kent to blanket dismissal of any and all myth or divine type approaches.

See Transcendent Knowledge Podcast (Max Freakout in discussion with Cyberdisciple) episodes reacting to James Kent podcast series:
https://egodeaththeory.org/2020/11/07/transcendent-knowledge-podcast-episodes/#Episode-22

lol Houot just said “be playful, fun, interesting” – Mr. Flat Affect, social-skills-challenged, STEM-based critic poor at P R; churlish, clumsy, and self-contradictory.

An ancient Greek Mysteries festival. I’ve met some of the participants at my church.

Rumored: Dr. Secret & the Evil M. Hoffman will be there:
Carl Ruck & Mark Hoffman.

I am not familiar with this long-running festival. My site isn’t one to announce events, but there are exceptions – my psychedelic church members told me about this event.

https://www.springmysteries.com —

“Since 1985, Aquarian Tabernacle Church has been continuing the Eleusinian Mysteries originally held in Ancient Greece.

“These mysteries, held every year in honor of Demeter and Persephone, explore universal concepts and truths from the perspective of the seeker of hidden knowledge.

“Our Priests and Priestesses spend 3-4 months preparing for the festival, working with the energies of the Gods and rehearsing the ritual drama that is presented over 4 days for hundreds of people each Easter Weekend.

“Though the main portions of the event focus on Greek deities, there are many workshops and other groups that bring a plethora of alternate ways to explore, including the general mysteries of women, men and those who identify as a mixture of both energies.

“There is also a vendors space, with many often-requested items and trinkets to take home, and plenty of space for conversations or introspective moments.

“Everyone who attends will come away transformed and with wonderful memories of their time in Eleusis.”

https://www.youtube.com/@witchcrafttv.online

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Spring+Mysteries+Festival%22

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Spring+Mysteries+Festival

Amanita Workshops by David Samas

https://www.springmysteries.com/workshops-2023

“Amanita Muscaria: The Witches’ Magick” by David Samas – leading expert.

Stream: Festival Fun Show – Spring Mysteries Festival

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_bpwJj-LyI —

Streamed live on Mar 15, 2025

Description:

🎥✨ Get ready for an enchanting time on the Festival Fun Show, streaming exclusively on Witchcraft TV! 🌙

Join the charismatic A.C. Fisher-Aldag as she welcomes a truly magical guest—the esteemed Arch-Priestess Belladonna Laveau of the Aquarian Tabernacle Church of Wicca (USA).

Together, they’ll dive into the heart of contemporary Wicca, exploring the sacred traditions, spiritual insights, and transformative work of the ATC and all about the upcoming Spring Mysteries Festival.

This is more than just an interview—it’s a celebration of wisdom, community, and the journey toward empowerment through spiritual practice.

Opportunity to learn from one of Wicca’s most inspiring leaders and advocates. 💫

https://witchcrafttv.online/

#WitchcraftTV

#BelladonnaLaveau

#MagicAwaits

#FestivalFunShow

#AquarianTabernacleChurch

#WiccaWisdom

#witchcrafttv

See Also

The Reveries (thereveries.org) – Eleusinian Mysteries
https://egodeaththeory.org/2025/02/25/idea-development-page-25/#Fontaine

https://thereveries.org

Michael Hoffman – Study version, condensed, for scholarly purposes, not for publishing; markup from POV of the Egodeath theory

_{Site Map: Alan Houot}

Contents:

• Motivation of this Page
• Citation and Link
• In Honor of the God Dionysus
• The Psychonaut’s Ship: Pairing Technologies with Psychedelics to Augment User Agency (22)
  • Prefatory (1 p.)
  • Introduction (1.5)
  • 1. Mystic Fear and Shaman Control (2.5)
  • 2. Surrenderism for Some, but Not for All (2.3)
  • 3. Secularization of Experience (4)
  • 4. Augmenting Agency and Control with Prostheses (5)
  • Conclusion (2)
  • Notes (2)
• See Also

Motivation of this Page

Not intended to be a clean page; intended as notes and commentary page.

todo: remove non key phrases. bold the key phrases. add my commentary.

Study / markup commentary notepad page. NOT to be archive copy of article.

62 hits on ‘surrender’

For scholarly study only, not for publication.

Relevant to the Egodeath theory of psychedelic eternalism.

Citation and Link

https://www.academia.edu/78214256/The_Psychonauts_Ship_Pairing_Technologies_with_Psychedelics_to_Augment_User_Agency

In Honor of the God Dionysus

Dionysus made me dedicate this page to him.

In honor of Dionysus, by pilot Cybermonk.

https://egodeaththeory.org/2025/01/07/idea-development-23/#Pilot-Helmsman-Steersman-Begged-Dionysus – Find 32 hits on ‘dionysus’

https://egodeaththeory.org/?s=dionysus+pirates – see another idea development page too maybe.

Due to fluke, I got this before it was avail Feb 2, 2025; i got it Dec 23, 2024. march 20 2025 i also bought $25 audiobook, which is great format; good content; good voczn, good tech usage.

Strangely the book lacks surrenderism critique and big claim of shamans having control stability during Psilocybin, tho Houot focused on that pair of topics in 2019 Masters dissertation & article Psyc Ship.

The Psychonaut’s Ship

Pairing Technologies with Psychedelics to Augment User Agency

A. M. Houot

Prefatory

written by Houot

Modern psychedelic users are commonly advised to surrender to altered states of consciousness.

[surrender to what?
Michelle Janikian’s book uses this same strange construction.
More like: lower-level personal control system (child-thinking;
monolithic, autonomous control)
is made to surrender to
2-level, dependent control;
the overpowered female mind is made to surrender to the male;
FEMALE:
the control thought-receiver
ctr
the helpless thought-receiver
htr
the helpless control-thought receiver
hctr
MALE:
hidden source of control-thoughts
hsct
the control-thought inserter
cti
the uncontrollable source of control-thoughts
usct]

Once users consider the possibility that ‘surrenderism’ is a necessary prerequisite—though not an exclusive approach—coupled with the idea that psychedelic experiences might not be religious or supernatural, the idea emerges that pairing technologies with psychedelics is a viable methodology to comport oneself during psychedelic states.

Shamans display signs of control and mastery upon entering altered states, partly because of intentionally crafted techniques and technologies that assist them.

It is argued that modern psychedelic users of modern technologies may augment the level of control over their experiences, that is to say, making use of prostheses to maintain balance during intoxicated states.

[f134 stand on right foot to maintain balance and avoid control instability
Great Canterbury Psalter:

f145 stand on right foot to maintain balance and avoid control instability:

f77 stand on right foot to maintain balance and avoid control instability:

prostheses – crutch to have stability while incorrectly stand on left foot

stand on left foot = rely on egoic possibilism-thinking –> control instability

stand on right foot = rely on eternalism-thinking. –> control stability

crutch could indicate washed-clean, qualified possibilism-thinking; left foot touches stable column base.

/ end Michael Hoffman images]

Page 2 — A M HOUOT [left page header]
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The understanding of the concept psychonaut or sailor of the mind is analogously expanded to include the psychonaut’s ship, comparable to nautical technologies used by sailors .

The example of the psychonaut’s ship provides the platform upon which to reflect future applications and utilities of psychedelic technologies .

If psychedelic users are like sailors of the mind, then, what is their ship? What follows is an inquiry into how modern psychedelic users can apply technologies like their shaman counterparts to increase agency during psychedelic experiences.

Introduction

written by Houot

The commonly held supposition that modern users have little to no agency during psychedelic experiences needs revision .

[transformation of mental model of personal control system/ personal control agency]

Recommendations to passively surrender to the experience, i.e., ‘surrenderism’,1 is of particular interest when it comes to modern users’ fears and concerns of psychedelic experiences.

[the experience of the threat of catastrophic loss of control, due to relying on monolithic, autonomous control]

Experts recommend modern users surrender to psychedelic states, and users unquestioningly heed such advice.

[the personal control system is made to surrender to 2-level, dependent control – the underlying reality]

Alternative approaches as to how one comports oneself in altered states of consciousness are available .

The following is an examination and expansion of one such overlooked approach, that is, using technology [VAGUE] during psychedelic experiences.

I contemplate how pairing modern technology with psychedelic states may provide augmented user agency compared to the current, dominant surrenderism model.

In Section 1, I consider one of many possible reasons why modern users would want to pair technology with psychedelic experiences, namely, to curb fear of the unknown.

[dread of ego dissolution? no; of: the hidden, uncontrollable source of control-thoughts]

VAGUE, VAGUE, VAGUE

I argue elsewhere that modern psychedelic users need not only interpret their experiences from the mystic’s fear and surrender perspective but also might consider adopting

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shamanic principles of control and mastery of altered states through the use of techniques and technologies [VAGUE].2

In Section 2, I defend the premise of surrendering to [TO WHAT?] psychedelics, however, for particular subsets of users and motives; for example, the inexperienced, the inadequately prepared or trained, or preventing harm to self or others.

In Section 3, I highlight the tendency of ancient peoples to interpret that which they did not understand or control as somehow being religious or supernatural.

Simply because present-day people do not adequately comprehend psychedelic experiences does not qualify these experiences as sacred.

I invite readers to consider historical examples when science and technology could eventually better explain natural phenomena than divine beings or gods.

Additionally, many people take the notion of surrender for granted, but I ask why modern psychedelic users must surrender; why should surrender be given automatically; and why taking into consideration some level of control of experiences is not treated?

In a move away from surrenderism, ayahuasca-drinking Santo Daime religious members incorporate rituals and codified frameworks, attempting to constrain the psychedelically unconstrained mind.

[good phrase]

These sociocultural-specific constraints are a step in the direction I propose .

Finally, I develop ideas to integrate purpose-built psychedelic technologies, or prostheses [DAMN IT MAN, THIS IS AS VAGUE AS “THE TRADITIONAL METHODS OF THE MYSTICS”], to constrain or channel the intoxicated mind, aiming to increase user agency [UNTIL FUZZY WUZZY LOVING CUP EXPLOSION CLIMAX OF NEW BIRTH] during psychedelic experiences.

1. Mystic Fear and Shaman Control

written by Houot

In previous research, I analyze ways in which modern users might conceptualize the psychedelic experience that counters the current fear-laden discourse on drugs.3

Since many modern societies and individuals fear [FEAR OF WHAT? the experience of the threat of catastrophic loss of control] the experiences psychedelics elicit, I explore the likely roots [hidden underlying snake in basket; the hidden, uncontrollable source of control-thoughts] of

4 A M HOUOT Psychedelic Press XXXV

these fears, and once known, ask how modern technology [VAGUE AF] might be used to somehow steer or control psychedelic experiences .

For that which one controls no matter the degree, one increases one’s agency [try harder, egoic control foundation! until you are dead king hung on tree, ram caught in thicket] during the experience, therefore, theoretically minimizing one’s fear of the once-held fear object.

Early researchers such as Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts, and Richard Alpert (later known as Ram Dass) turned to Far Eastern and Indian religions and philosophies in the 1950s–1970s, notably mysticism, in an effort to make sense of psychedelic effects on modern users’ subjectivity.

Depending on their religious inclination mystics may speak of love and devotion [2-level, dependent control; “relational”] when ‘melting away’ and merging [beginner unity] with the Other, or they might speak of fear and the unavoidable surrender to some divine being(s).4

Mystics surrender to a claimed divine being or presence, suggesting that whatever or whomever they surrender to is in charge; the Other is in control for as long as the mystic remains in the altered state.5 Psychedelics alter consciousness as well, leaving modern users with similar experiences and questions, hence the analogous comparisons to mysticism .

In continuing this line of reasoning, I argue that modern users find themselves in at least three types of ‘master/subject relations’: master/slave, host (master)/guest, and teacher (master)/student.6 In each case, users relinquish control of their being, thereby assuming the role of slave, guest, or student when in psychedelic-induced states .

A modified framework based on former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s ‘there are known knowns’ comment is used to get at modern psychedelic users’ ultimate fear [the experience of the threat of catastrophic loss of control due to the hidden, uncontrollable source of control-thoughts] , drilling down from knowns to unknowns, from which I develop a new qualitative framework to explain notions of self in a surrenderism paradigm regarding the assessment of ‘complete’ [not mystical; just Stacean] mystical experiences, and ask whether there is another way

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for modern users to increase their agency [until the climax transformation is reached] during experiences.7

From this perspective, I turn to a spiritual practice that is farther removed from modern society and culture, namely, shamanism, appreciating how shamans’ notions of control and mastery (claimed by modern academics) of drug and nondrug altered states can inform modern users’ conceptualizations of psychedelic use and self-comportment.

Shamans use techniques and technologies [SOUNDS LIKE VAGUE B S] (broadly construed) such as song lyrics [like Ride the Lighting by Metallica? Little Dolls by Ozzy? Twilight Zone by Rush?] and melodies, dances, rattles, and drums [shaman Neil Peart], particularly a technique proposed by psychologist Richard Noll called ‘mental imagery cultivation’ [image of the experience of the threat of catastrophic loss of control], through which novices learn to develop the vividness of visions with the intent to control them.8 [how do “YOU” control the intent that YOU receive from the uncontrollable source of control-thoughts?]

Shamans not only have means to enter into altered states of consciousness; they also have systems in place apparently[???] to control their experiences.

Shamans do not speak about altered states in terms of fear and surrender as mystics and modern psychedelic users do; conversely, they display control and mastery.

In reframing the perception of the psychedelic experience to one that moves away from surrenderism [f u, gods! shaking fist] and which addresses fear, I conclude that modern psychedelic users might fare well to use ‘mysticism to explain’ while simultaneously using ‘shamanism to control’ their experiences.9

As expert shamans have manifold [“many” is b s like “there are many ways of Psilocybin experience without drugs”, tho none work well enough] techniques and technologies to enter into and exercise some control of altered states or of themselves in altered states,

likewise modern psychedelic users can do the same through the use of what I call ‘symbolico-technological relations’, in other words, pairing symbol with technology:

Psychedelics, symbols, and technologies used together reveal new applications, resulting in a wrestled-free symbolicotechnological third function. [sounds bull shiite]

Coupling symbol with technology creates avenues of new experiences, experiences malleable by

6 A M HOUOT Psychedelic Press XXXV

the user depending on the co-equal symbolico-technological relation and how each co-shapes the created third function.10

I say further that psychedelic technologies in general have considerable potential to act as ‘prostheses’ or crutches that afford a kind of balancing act when psychedelic users experience non-ordinary mental and perceptual conditions.11

[f177: stand on right foot to maintain balance and avoid control instability:

I realize now that I limited my scope of ‘psychedelic technology’ to symbolico-technologies only; in actuality, they are but a subset of what a psychedelic technology can be.

I flesh out the discussion about why and how to pair modern technology with psychedelic experiences in my previous work.

However, I shall expand on my arguments by detailing the obvious need for surrenderism, the eventual need to abandon surrenderism, and propose additional utilities for pairing technologies with psychedelics.

I define and discuss psychedelic technology in detail in Section 4.

2. Surrenderism for Some, but Not for All

written by Houot

Experts in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and harm reduction contexts have asserted the notion of surrender since at least the 1960s.12

It is no wonder that current Psychedelic Renaissance researchers, chiefly focusing on psychedelics’ therapeutic use, would advise modern users, especially their clinical study participants, to surrender [to what?].

Advising surrender in research contexts minimizes risk to everyone involved and ensures there are nil or few mishaps during the research process; an unpredictable, ‘freaked out’ participant is bad for business, so to speak.

In addition, we can safely assume that psychedelic-naïve and -experienced participants are far from exerting shamanic standards of control.

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While I disagree with such a blanketed recommendation for modern users, I point out appropriate instances when individuals should practice surrender: (i) user inexperience; (ii) inadequate preparation and training; and (iii) surrender is better than potentially harming oneself or others. [smell of hubris]

Author of the book on ayahuasca phenomenology, The Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience, psychologist Benny Shanon identifies three levels of cleansing that ayahuasca induces: bodily, psychological, and spiritual in this progression .

For Shanon, the ayahuasca drinker would find it difficult to ascend to heightened dimensions of experience if one did not first overcome personal [in the sense of, personal control system] psychological issues.13

Thus, surrender is a good strategy for novices who have little to no experience with psychedelics or still have personal issues to deal with.

[that’s the wrong sense of ‘personal’; personal control system ; the egoic personal control system – not unique to one’s history]

Once these issues have been worked out and the user no longer takes psychedelics for therapeutic or personal growth motives, one can work on ‘spiritual’ cleansing, before, or in parallel, attempting to control the experience through and with technology .

Second, and closely tied to the point above, users would be advised to adopt a surrender position if inadequately prepared or trained in psychedelic experiences .

The majority of modern users are not trained at all to handle these experiences compared to the intensive training shamans receive .

The motive for taking psychedelics is also an important factor: while many shamans are first and foremost chosen to be shamans,14 they enter altered states on behalf of members of their community in addition to gaining insight and knowledge from other realms to ensure their community’s survival.15

The trends du jour for taking psychedelics among modern users, as a result of recently rediscovering or rebranding psychedelics, are personal and spiritual growth,16 and addiction interruption.17

Users desperate to personally

8 A M HOUOT Psychedelic Press XXXV

and spiritually grow or become well would likely try anything such as ingesting a psychedelic even though they might lack adequate preparation .

Once again, surrender turns out to be good advice for someone unprepared or ill-trained to operate with an intoxicated mind.

[“surrender” is WAY too vague, folk talk]

Practice through repetition offers users a feasible way out of surrenderism .

Psychedelic psychotherapist Duncan Blewett, who worked with Humphrey Osmond in Canada in the 1950s, hints at this:

‘Self-surrender is not an event that occurs only once, but must be repeated as additional repressed material [B S Psychology baloney] is released.

Each repetition becomes easier because of the positive reinforcement given by each previous self-surrender’.18

For Blewett, repeated self-surrender to psychedelics becomes easier as one accustoms to them and jointly attends to their own personal and repressed issues (similar to Shanon’s views) .

Evidently, there exists the possibility and even likelihood that one need not endlessly surrender to the psychedelic as experiences become ‘easier’ .

Such initial surrenderist maneuvers serve as necessary stepping-stones toward increased agency of one’s subsequent experiences.

[I can agree if elaborate and differentiate two different senses – as it stands, TOO VAGUE]

Third, surrendering to the experience is better than, for example, physically or mentally breaking down, therefore potentially harming oneself or others:

‘Surrender can be considered a form of passive control, in that surrendering to the experience is a better alternative than resisting the oncoming altered state, which could lead to bad experiences’.19

The very act of surrendering, knowing that one should surrender, either from one’s intuition or a clinician’s recommendation, is a form of control because the experiencer is regulating that part of their self that might resist, or react to, the temporary bodily and mental changes.

[REALLY must control transformation, not binary have or don’t have control]

While surrender can be considered a soft form of control, it is not the sort of control I illustrate in later sections .

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3. Secularization of Experience

written by Houot

The second commonly held attitude that must change for a revision in the way modern users consider psychedelic experiences, ultimately leading to a new or parallel paradigm, is the secularization of experience .

In his book, Cleansing the Doors of Perception: The Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals, religious scholar Huston Smith comments on the sacred, surrender, and control .

He is quite right when he says that that which we wield greater control or comprehension over leads to demystification .

For example, humans do not control the weather, but meteorologists today better understand it than polytheistic humans did thousands of years ago who attributed weather events to one of the gods.20 Of course, we do not know for certain whether weather gods exist, maybe they do, but I imagine most people would consult meteorological science and technology experts to explain climatic happenings .

Smith goes on to question whether (total) control is even wanted, that surrendering to some of life’s experiences has its virtues and not doing so could lead to cynicism: Not only is the notion of total control contradictory, it isn’t even attractive .

To enter a friendship, to say nothing of marriage, with intent to control it is to soil the prospect from the start .

Life calls for balancing the rewards of control with gifts that come to us through openness and surrender .

The more we resolve to have things our own way, the more closed we become to the virtues in alternative ways .

If we cannot perceive the virtue inherent in the capacity to surrender – to surrender to another person in love, or to obligation in the sense of feeling its claims upon us— cynicism awaits us.21

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I too shun the idea of trying to dominate friends and romantic partners and agree with the unattractiveness of ‘total control’ over life’s circumstances .

Let us backtrack for a moment and instead refrain from speaking in absolutes .

What about some form of partial control, not when it comes to people, but other features of reality? Why must some lived experiences remain a mystery? Why would not seeing Smith’s virtue in surrender lead to cynicism? On the contrary, I find the prospect of giving more agency to psychedelic users through technological means optimistic and positive .

‘Intent to control’ need not lead to ‘soiling’ experiences .

The definition of to soil is ‘to stain or defile morally—corrupt; to make unclean especially superficially—dirty’.22 Intent to control psychedelic experiences that are commonly considered to have religious or supernatural overtones does not indicate psychedelic technology users want to morally defile or make unclean such experiences .

Humans have always controlled aspects of their lives and surroundings in partial and agreeable ways; psychedelic experiences are nonexempt from suchlike pursuits .

Smith’s position sounds like a desperate effort to dissuade probative people from questioning their lived experiences and reality, reminiscent of religious leaders coping with Copernican angst .

As mentioned in the preceding section, repeated self-surrender is important for user acclimatization to altered states .

In a similar way, members of the syncretic ayahuasca religion called Santo Daime incorporate ritualistic and cultural cues to constrain the unconstrained mind .

Lifshitz, Sheiner and Kirmayer23 report how Santo Daime members structure their religious-psychedelic practices: men and women segregate in rows expanding outward from a central table where senior members sit, members recite prayers, sing hymns, coordinate dances, meditate silently while seated, and their interpretation of

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visions contribute to an ‘…ordering of ritual time and space structures the psychedelic experience along multiple modalities .

On a pragmatic level, it provides the framework and repeatability required for regular religious practice, and codifies Santo Daime’.24 Seen from the religious/healing perspective of Santo Daime, Lifshitz et al .

say, ‘Thus, promoting healing with psychedelics likely requires constraining the unconstrained mind through symbolic situational cues and embodied rituals that emphasize the potential to move from maladaptive patterns toward constructive states and behaviours’.25 Although my views about the claimed inherent religious feel to psychedelics and those of Santo Daime practitioners differ, I commend them and indigenous users for their codified frameworks that attempt to constrain or give order to the psychedelic experience .

At this juncture, I address the following possible objection to my argumentation thus far .

Shamans and Santo Daime members ostensibly already use techniques and technologies to control aspects of their psychedelic experiences in religious contexts .

One might ask why the abandonment of religious/supernatural connotations would be necessary to modern technology use that increases user agency during psychedelic experiences .

Neuroscientist Robin Carhart-Harris says scientists aim to be: …dispassionate, to really give ourselves the best chance to glean what is true .

… I come here with an open mind wanting to understand the phenomena but with a motivation to try to study it .

I think if you just leave it [psychedelics] in this enchanting space, then you might be motivated not to even study it.26 A secular approach stands a greater chance at advancing knowledge of psychedelic states .

The religiously inclined or the ‘enchanted’

12 A M HOUOT Psychedelic Press XXXV

may stop short of probing deeper into experiences for any number of reasons, whereas people with more of a secularist mindset will likely ask questions and conduct experiments that contradict indigenous and mainstream religious dogma .

Psychiatrist Matthew W Johnson recognizes the fallibility in using nonempirical frameworks in psychedelic medicine and research contexts and discloses multiple dangers regarding the use of religious references by psychedelic scientists and clinicians .

‘It is important to operate instead from a secular framework that is nonetheless open to working with patients or participant [sic] of any religious/spiritual background’.27

As tempting as it may be for some clinicians to introduce religious and spiritual belief systems to help study participants find meaning from their experiences and about their lives, these placeholders and the icons that represent them should be avoided, according to Johnson, because they not only precondition psychedelic users to have a specific experience, but they also alienate participants who might be atheist or practice another religion whose religious symbolism is absent from the study environment .

In short, preconditioning experiences and alienating study participants leads to bad science and practice, not to mention ethical concerns .

Surrenderism is a necessary step in one’s evolving psychedelic journeying process; however, it is not the only way to comport oneself as I hope is beginning to become clear .

Additionally, once one accepts the possibility that altered states of consciousness—including those psychedelic-induced—are not religious or sacred, one would no longer resort to unconditional surrender as mystics do and as modern researchers recommend .

As one gains enough experience through repeat exposure and the initial transcendental luster subsides, repeat users might realize that otherworldly phenomena afforded by psychedelics

THE PSYCHONAUT’S SHIP 13 Psychedelic Press XXXV

are indeed highly curious other dimensions, yet without the religiosacral connotations .

In the next and final section, I argue for technology use during psychedelic states that moves beyond but also compliments the abovementioned ritualistic and symbolic signaling.

4. Augmenting Agency and Control with Prostheses

written by Houot

Ernst Jünger, German author and friend of Albert Hofmann, coined the term psychonaut (from the German, psychonauten)28 to mean ‘psychedelic astronaut, explorer of the inner cosmos’.29

While the astronaut-explorer-of-psychedelic-spaces description aptly references these experiences, we should also inspect the meaning of the suffix nautès .

In this sense, psycho-naut means ‘sailor of the mind’ or ‘navigator of the psyche’, referring to individuals wanting to explore their minds by means of any kind of consciousness alteration.30 The resultant substantive form then is psychonautics, or ‘(the art of) “sailing the mind” or “navigating the psyche”’.31

If psychedelic users are like sailors of the mind, then, what is their ship? How does one turn sailing the psychedelic-intoxicated mind or navigating the psychedelic-intoxicated psyche into a predictable and controllable art form? Psychonautic technology from rituals and symbolico-cultural cues to the pairing of technologies with psychedelics is an overlooked topic in modern psychedelic discourse .

The sailor on their ship does not leave port hoping that the tide will take them to their desired destination .

No; the sailor commands a transportation device made for a specific purpose .

The ship undoubtedly is subject to waves, weather, creatures beneath the water’s surface, etc .

Nevertheless, the experienced sailor knows how to use their technology

14 A M HOUOT Psychedelic Press XXXV

to steer through the unknown, that which they cannot control, and toward their destination .

They use technology to go from one point to a predetermined other, and their ship is suited to deal with many natural events en route .

The same can be said about the sailor of psychedelic worlds .

Whereas both surrenderists and psychedelic technology users might start with an intention to guide them through the experience, surrenderists basically leap into the ocean of altered consciousness expecting the tide to take them to their destination, an action predicated on hope and submission .

This is folly .

Modern users would do better to think about using a sort of ship, some technical or technological accoutrement that can improve the journey’s steadiness and at their volition .

One must ask whether one is a passive passenger (e.g., surrender) or a course-charting captain utilizing seaworthy technology (e.g., control) .

In demarcating the boundary between science and technology, philosopher of technology Andrew Feenberg says: ‘Science and technology share a similar type of rationality based on empirical observation and knowledge of natural causality, but technology is concerned with usefulness rather than truth .

Where science seeks to know, technology seeks to control.’32 No one knows for certain the metaphysical status of psychedelic states; we can infer however, according to Feenberg, there is an inherent element of control regarding the essence and usefulness of technology .

Just as modern-day instruments help natural scientists learn more about reality, technologies offering greater control and therefore agency to psychedelic users would also likely help answer experiencers’ and scientists’ knowledge or truth claims about psychedelic phenomena .

I have previously defined my concept of psychedelic ‘symbolicotechnology’, 33 but fell short of defining what ‘psychedelic technology’

THE PSYCHONAUT’S SHIP 15 Psychedelic Press XXXV

is.

Here, I define psychedelic technology as follows: a humanmade technique or technology that pairs with psychedelic states of consciousness for the purpose of documentation, data collection, and/ or to control aspects of the experience for purposes of navigating, coshaping, directing one’s experience, etc., resulting in augmented user agency.34

In other words, psychedelic technology broadly speaking is any technique or technology paired with psychedelics that gives users greater insight, control, and/or agency over their experiences.

There are at least two types of psychedelic technology: passive and active.

Psychedelic technology is passive when that which is being overseen is the documentation, collection, and analysis of data from one’s experience.

For example, physiological testing equipment can be used to pick up signals or biomarkers from psychedelics’ effects on users .

Note that high-tech research devices such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) were not designed with psychedelics in mind but are used by psychedelic researchers .

Furthermore, other modern technologies and passive psychedelic technologies certainly will assist in developing purpose-specific active psychedelic technologies .

Psychedelic technologies are passive when they are in the background to collect or monitor data in some capacity, and usually would not be purpose-built for psychedelic experiences, although the latter is possible .

Active psychedelic technology is a means to increase control of experiences through navigating, co-shaping, or directing .

Within the category of active psychedelic technology, we can further differentiate between hard and soft control .

I define hard control as controlling everything about the experience, that is, the experiencer wields absolute control .

Since this is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future, if ever, soft control is what trained psychedelic technology users can do:

16 A M HOUOT Psychedelic Press XXXV

they are able to navigate, shape, and determine how their experience unfolds depending on their expertise with psychedelics and their skill in using paired psychedelic technologies .

As mentioned earlier, such skill requires one moving beyond the prerequisite surrender phase of one’s psychedelic journeying evolution .

Passive psychedelic technology can become active if, when monitoring vital signs, the researcher directs the experiencer to take specific anticipatory actions, for example, to raise or lower blood pressure, heart beats per minute, directing the drug user’s attention, changing position of the body, introducing an idea or object during the experience, etc .

Therefore, psychedelic technologies are active when they are in the foreground to steer experiences, and presumably will be purpose-built for psychedelic experiences .

Not necessarily a prosthesis to stabilize one’s visionary experience but rather a documentation tool can be found in Qualia Research Institute’s Tracer Replication Tool .

This psychedelic technology was designed to ‘collect quantitative data about psychedelic tracers’.35 The internet browser-based tool works as follows .

The participant observes a bouncing blue ball on their computer screen while in an intoxicated state .

Once the visionary experience subsides, they toggle the tool’s settings to reconstruct what the tracer looked like as it was superimposed upon the default blue ball in addition to providing information such as drug type, dosage, how many hours into the intoxicated state they used the tool, and how many hours after the experience they documented their tracer .

The Tracer Replication Tool is a simple technology purposely built to document a specific aspect of psychedelic perception .

As usergenerated reports filter in, we may make more sense of what happens to visual perception depending on drug type and dosage and we will be able to literally show such representations to others .

While one’s unique physiology and cognition shape each person’s subjective experience,

THE PSYCHONAUT’S SHIP 17 Psychedelic Press XXXV

the above technology may reveal that drug, dosage, age, mood, culture, or any number of standalone or combined factors may lead to consistent and predictable tracer phenomena .

I offer another practical way to think about psychedelic technology .

Aikido is a Japanese martial art that teaches the importance of defensive maneuvering by using the attacker’s own movements to subdue him .

The attacked conserves energy by flowing with, not against, the attacker: ‘Aikido is performed by blending with the motion of the attacker and redirecting the force of the attack rather than opposing it head-on .

… The goal of Aikido training is not perfection of a step or skill, but rather improving one’s character according to the rules of nature’.36 In this way, the attacker expends more energy and thus is more at risk of tiring themself out, making themself susceptible to the impassable defensive offense of the attacked; the attacker must work harder to bring down their opponent .

According to the survival response known as fight-or-flight (-orfreeze), psychedelic technology use would be considered as a form of ‘fight’ because it is certainly not flight or freeze .

However, it is not fighting per se, rather an active and anticipatory defensive-like maneuver, a form of flowing with one’s precarious environment with the help of technological accoutrements designed for psychedelic states .

Sailors know the limits and capabilities of their technologies and have expertise in navigating their ships around adverse weather events or, if need be, to sail through waves head on .

Sailors do not try to control the weather but instead know how to work with it by getting the most out of their nautical technology .

The ship is purposefully built for moving atop the uncertainty and randomness of waves: it has a keel to stabilize, sails to propel, a rudder to steer .

Active psychedelic technologies would have comparable features that enable users to gain some level of control over the uncertainty and randomness of visionary phenomena and worlds .

18 A M HOUOT Psychedelic Press XXXV

Whatever the intoxicated mind shows experiencers, one must face it and accept what comes; one must confront whatever presents itself or that which needs to be revealed .

(One day, perhaps, technologies will be capable of inducing specific/desired visionary content as well.) Sailors cannot control approaching waves and storms; they skillfully maneuver their vessel with or around them .

Similarly, modern psychedelic technologies may enable users to direct their experiences with greater control irrespective of that which presents itself to consciousness .

Conclusion

written by Houot

Historical evidence suggests humans sacralize that which they do not comprehend nor control .

In accordance with the mystic’s views, surrendering implies that the psychedelic user foregoes whatever agency they may have .

History teaches that there might not be anything religious or supernatural about psychedelic-induced states; likely, these spaces merely are different dimensions of reality upon which, because of naivete and lack of knowledge, people put such placeholders .

The surrenderism model within psychedelia is a prerequisite for inexperienced, untrained, or novice users and should not be abandoned any time soon .

However, sustained belief in letting go or giving oneself over to the experience concretizes the feeling that one could not possibly understand these realms .

I contend that surrenderism may have damaging downstream effects insofar as experiencers relinquish pursuits of experiential sense-making .

Academics and amateurs must eventually transcend surrenderism and religious/supernatural connotations in favor of new methods to have any chance at making epistemic gains pertaining to the visionary, otherworldly content afforded by psychedelics .

THE PSYCHONAUT’S SHIP 19 Psychedelic Press XXXV

Recognizing surrenderism’s usefulness as a means, but not exclusively as an end, and welcoming prospects of having more agency, prepares the psychedelic user for new types of experience .

Any form of constraining the psychedelic mind, from rituals and symbols to psychedelic technologies, helps users manage visionary experiences .

In addition to controlling their voyage, curbing fear37 is but one reason why one would want to use technology during their psychedelic experiences; other reasons include navigating, co-shaping, communicating, and determining the experience .

The purpose, design, and function of a psychedelic technology will depend on one’s worldview, the type of knowledge one seeks, and what aspect of the experience one wishes to stabilize or document .

Humans will continue to find ways of incorporating technology with psychedelic experiences .

Psychedelic experiences have already been modified by shamanic technologies and ritualistic and symbolic cues found in the Santo Daime religion, and will continue to be by modern users and their technologies .

We must begin thinking how modern technology will shape psychedelic experiences for any user, no matter their cultural conditioning .

Pairing deliberately designed modern technologies with psychedelics is not only the future, it is the next evolutionary step in psychedelic drug use .

It is going to happen, and so we must consider how it will happen, how technology will be used before, during, and after psychedelic experiences, and for what purposes? Passive psychedelic technologies already exist and are being used in academic research .

What encourages me is what the future may bring regarding active psychedelic technologies .

I do not know what they will be, but their development and use are indeed possible .

Admittedly, I argue for something that does not yet exist, and cannot exist until

20 A M HOUOT Psychedelic Press XXXV

people secularize their psychedelic experiences, outgrow their tendencies toward surrenderism, and seriously consider the possibility of pairing modern technology with these dimensions of non-ordinary experience for the purposes of augmented control, agency, and mastery, and hopefully, newfound knowledge as a result .

Notes

written by Houot

1 Houot AM (2019) .

Toward a Philosophy of Psychedelic Technology: An Exploration of Fear, Otherness, and Control, Master’s thesis, University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands .

https://essay.utwente.nl/77339/ 2 Houot (2019) .

3 Houot (2019) .

4 Stace WT (1960) .

Mysticism and Philosophy .

London: MacMillan and Co., Limited .

5 Stace (1960) .

6 Houot (2019, pp 17–20) .

7 Houot (2019) .

8 Houot (2019, pp 39–40); Noll R (1985) ‘Mental Imagery Cultivation as a Cultural Phenomenon: The Role of Visions in Shamanism’, Current Anthropology, 26(4), pp 443–461 .

9 Houot (2019, p 49) .

10 Houot (2019, pp 44–45) .

11 Houot (2019, p 50) .

12 Masters REL and Houston J (1966) .

The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience .

New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc.; Blewett D (1970) .

‘The Psychedelics and Group Therapy’ in Aaronson B and Osmond H (eds) Psychedelics: The Uses and Implications of Hallucinogenic Drugs .

Garden City, NY: Anchor Books; Leary T, Metzner R and Alpert R (2007/1964) .

The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead .

New York: Citadel Press; Johnson MW, Richards WA and Griffiths RR (2008) .

‘Human Hallucinogen Research: Guidelines for Safety’, Journal of Psychopharmacology, 22(6), pp 603–620; Girón S (2013) .

‘Working with Trauma: Psychedelic Harm Reduction and Transpersonal Psychotherapy’, MAPS Bulletin, 23(3), 2013 Annual Report, pp 47–49 .

13 Shanon B (2002) .

The Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience .

Oxford University Press, p 307 .

THE PSYCHONAUT’S SHIP 21 Psychedelic Press XXXV 14 Krippner S (2000) .

‘The Epistemology and Technologies of Shamanic States of Consciousness’, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 7(11–12), pp 93–118 .

15 Walsh R (1991) .

‘Shamanic Cosmology: Psychological Examination of the Shaman’s Worldview’, ReVision 13(2), pp 86–100; Walsh R (1995) .

‘Phenomenological Mapping: A Method for Describing and Comparing States of Consciousness’, Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 27, pp 25–56 .

16 Móró L, Simon K, Bárd I and Racz J (2011) .

‘Voice of the Psychonauts: Coping, Life Purpose, and Spirituality in Psychedelic Drug Users’, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 43(3), pp 188–198 .

17 Winkelman M (2014) .

‘Psychedelics as Medicines for Substance Abuse Rehabilitation: Evaluating Treatments with LSD, Peyote, Ibogaine and Ayahuasca’, Current Drug Abuse Reviews, 7(2), pp 101–116 .

18 Blewett D (1970) .

‘The Psychedelics and Group Therapy’ in Aaronson B and Osmond H (eds) Psychedelics: The Uses and Implications of Hallucinogenic Drugs .

Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, p 348 .

19 Houot (2019, p 49) .

20 Smith H (2000) .

Cleansing the Doors of Perception: The Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals .

New York: Tarcher/ Putnam, p 138 .

21 Smith (2000, pp 137–138) .

22 Merriam-Webster (n.d.) Soil .

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ soil (retrieved 17/3/2021) .

23 Lifshitz M, Sheiner E and Kirmayer LJ (2018) .

‘Cultural Neurophenomenology of Psychedelic Thought: Guiding the ‘Unconstrained’ Mind Through Ritual Context’ in Fox KCR and Christoff K (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Spontaneous Thought: Mind-Wandering, Creativity, and Dreaming .

Oxford University Press .

24 Lifshitz, Sheiner and Kirmayer (2018, pp 585–586) .

25 Lifshitz, Sheiner and Kirmayer (2018, p 576) .

26 Davis E (2018) ‘How to Think about Weird Beings’ in Luke D and Spowers R (eds) DMT Dialogues: Encounters with the Spirit Molecule .

Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, p 152 .

27 Johnson MW (2020) ‘Consciousness, Religion, and Gurus: Pitfalls of Psychedelic Medicine’, ACS Pharmacology & Translational Science .

https:// dx.doi.org/10.1021/acsptsci.0c00198 28 Ott J (2001) ‘Pharmañopo—Psychonautics: Human Intranasal, Sublingual, Intrarectal, Pulmonary and Oral Pharmacology of Bufotenine’, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 33(3), pp 273–281 .

29 Sjöstedt-Hughes P (n.d.) The Psychedelic Influence on Philosophy .

https:// highexistence.com/hidden-psychedelic-influence-philosophy-plato-nietzschepsychonauts- thoughts/ (retrieved 17/3/2021) .

30 Blom JD (2010) A Dictionary of Hallucinations .

New York: Springer Science & Business Media, p 434 .

22 A M HOUOT Psychedelic Press XXXV 31 Blom (2010, p 434); Ott (2001) .

32 Feenberg A (2006) ‘What Is Philosophy of Technology?’ in Dakers JR (ed) Defining Technological Literacy: Towards an Epistemological Framework .

New York: Palgrave Macmillan, p 5 (my italics) .

33 Houot (2019) .

34 When speaking specifically about psychedelics, the term ‘psychonautic technology’ should be avoided because it refers to techniques and technologies used during any form of consciousness alteration such as meditation, yoga, other pharmaceuticals, etc .

35 Wu L, Gomez Emilsson A and Zuckerman A (2020) QRI Psychophysics Toolkit – Tracer .

Qualia Research Institute .

https://qualiaresearchinstitute .

github.io/psychophysics/ (retrieved 9/12/2020) .

36 Aikikai Foundation (n.d.) What is Aikido? > About Aikido .

http://www.aikikai .

or.jp/eng/aikido/about.html (retrieved 17/3/2021) .

37 Houot (2019) .

/ written by Houot

See Also

Site Map: Alan Houot

Contents:

• Motivation for this Page
• How Much Does the Egodeath Theory Utilize the Concept of {death}?
• Outline All Headings of Houot Book Rise of the Psychonaut
• Read Aloud The Psychonauts Ship: What Are Cyb Dyns of “Surrender” in Janikian’s Folk Tech Book? Shamans Have Full Control — O RLY IZZAT SO??
• What Did I Discover? For Houot Context
• Salvation Salesman Gordon . . . . Wasson Shows Us That Christianity equals deceiving and lying to people and censorship
• Dionysus and the Pirates
• Secret Names of Scholars: Policy: Every Writer Gets Only Two Names: First & Last
• Errata in URL of WordPress copy of 2007 Main Article
• Effect Index semi-404, Josie Kins – is this site toast/history, or what? Must Check Archive.org of effectindex.com
• TRANSPERSONAL STATES
• Granting Advanced Degrees in Transcendent Knowledge per the Egodeath theory per Cybermonk
• Justified Rectified Purified Egoic Control Thinking
• Cubensis Nonbranching Horses & Balancing on Right Leg (Image f177)
• See Also

Motivation for this Page

Rough mobile draft, because need to create several pages. but hard to manage todos. gotta get them started. Started cleaning up on desktop.

Yesterday March 25, 2025, I realized that this mushroom-tree has YI branching form discovered yesterday. I got this picture a long time ago like maybe 2003.

I contributed this instance of mushroom imagery in Christian art to the Brown virtual db of all mushroom imagery in Christian art (whatever’s meant by “catalog” given that Browns proposal was no-go, no one has time). Brown should’ve proposed a database, not a committee.

My book review of Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination: Altered States of Knowledge in Late Antiquity, by Wouter Hanegraaff, 2022:

• Darth Hanegraaff’s Alderaanization of the Fixed Stars
     

How Much Does the Egodeath Theory Utilize the Concept of {death}?

Find ‘death’ in my two main theory-spec articles:

Self-control Cybernetics, Dissociative Cognition, & Mystic Ego Death (1997 core theory spec) (Hoffman, 1997) https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2020/11/30/self-control-cybernetics-dissociative-cognition-mystic-ego-death/
mh97
death – 5 hits

Death Quotes:

• Seeing the illusory aspects of this mental representation and feeling the absence of the accustomed sense of personal solidity can be experienced as death, as literal cessation of personal existence, because the naive mind strongly identifies with the projected image and the sense.
• Conceiving of the world as a fixed spacetime block leads to the astonishing potential of experiencing ego death, because the logic of ego’s control power is coherently disrupted.
• There are multiple [INSUFFICIENT] triggers for the dissociative cognitive state, including psychedelics, meditation, schizophrenia, sensory deprivation, hyperventilation, temporal-lobe epilepsy, UFO abduction, and near-death experiences. 
• Acid-rock mysticism vividly alludes to and resonates with ego death and the dissociative cognition that leads up to it.
• The peak experience of ego death can be rationally explained, whether or not its logic, perceptions, and hypotheses are valid.

The Entheogen Theory of Religion and Ego Death (Hoffman, 2007 main article) http://egodeath.com/EntheogenTheoryOfReligion.htm & https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/the-entheogen-theory-of-religion-and-ego-death-2006-main-article/
mh07
death – __ hits

Death Quotes:

• x
• x

Outline All Headings of Houot Book Rise of the Psychonaut

big todos: voice input all headings of Rise of the Psychonaut.

Needed for a book study page,

in my book review i will mention i have posted an outline of headings. voice efficient to enter headings

sections: which are the most relevant for the Egodeath theory? fav sections of book?

for my church book club intelligent discussion

copy here my Mission: to equip Loose Cognitive Science to endure Psilocybin and pass thru the gate to explore loose cognition realm wv w basic dynamics of control votrtex climax already on doily on silver platter for them:

Neo inserts chip in brain: the Egodeath theory, incl religious mythic motif analogies {mushrooms}, {branching}, {handedness}, and {stability} motifs –

instantly neo is able to explore loose cognition scientifically, already having the basic knowledge, CYBERNETIC WISDOM, the cybernetic communication transmission THE MESSAGE OF THE mushroom-trees ARTISTS, the dynamics of SURRENDER.

Know already the cheap trick of stand on right foot

cheap trick song https://youtu.be/T_Km11HNzUY?si=YhTKetnGvhVXBfcf

Read Aloud The Psychonauts Ship: What Are Cyb Dyns of “Surrender” in Janikian’s Folk Tech Book? Shamans Have Full Control — O RLY IZZAT SO??

Stupid mystics couldn’t figure out personal control system on Psilocybin

but somehow shamans achieved FULL ACIVE CONTROL.😑

it be ultra fast to copy his article into a page where i can get hands on it to analyze and critique how Houot is foolish. In what way Houot wise recomm?

Shamans are rational scientists who achieved what muddle headed mystics failed to try to achieve. Show the way wise Houot.

Houot ‘s major interest is surrenderism – why only barely mentioned in book Rise of the Psychonaut??

I STEM-explain “surr” – Houot ‘s fav topic ; he says shamans have full active control and he says they have ACTIVE CONTROL but mystics suck because they do passive surrenderism.

other big anticipated todo: read aloud voice recording Houot article The Psychonaut’s Ship which i already read on paper but merely 1 time every line.

What Did I Discover? For Houot Context

for reviewing Rise of the Psychonaut , the Egodeath theory is an example of a discovery.

Frame the Egodeath theory within Houot’s context as an illustrative example

religious myth depicts by analogy transformation from possibilism to eternalism and Psilocybin transformation of personal control system

same w mushroom-trees genre motifs {mushrooms}, {branching}, {handedness}, and {stability} motifs

Classical Antiquity aims at heimarmene, via Psilocybin transformation

Late Antiquity aims a little above Fate.

loose cognition block-universe eternalism personal control system transformation, NOT Ken Wilber’s beginners’ unity, is what ego transcendence is REALLY about per jan 1988 when put the pieces together – Ramesh Balsekar and Watts were closer than Wilber to figuring out core wisdom.

Wisdom core knowledge was botched by

common-core mysticism and perennialism attempt w sht-tonne of BAGGAGE noise obscuring wisdom more than revealing and usefully conveying and delivering wisdom.

you agree w common-core mysticism and perennialism? ok , therefore you agree w my every whim, a slave of the Egodeath theory & iceberg of hidden agendas like The Banker for the Pope, Gordon . . . .🔍🧐🤔 Wasson INFINITE CONFLICT OF INTEREST, the Pope Wasson says – on roller derby team The Salvation Salesmen-

are you going to believe the meditation hucksters — Zen master Brad? meditation is way more potent than 12g dried cubensis trust me

are you going to believe the salvation salesmen , lying Fraud pope Gordon . . . .🔍🧐🤔 Wasson the lying Pinocchio liar?

Salvation Salesman Gordon . . . .🔍🧐🤔 Wasson Shows Us That Christianity equals deceiving and lying to people and censorship

so commendable, we must defend, like the Art Historian Ronald Huggins’ Foraging Wrong article ,

We must go to bat to defend and run cover for Gordon . . . .🔍🧐🤔 Wasson and applaud and support his deceiving, lying, Fraud scholarship obstruction and excuse him.

This is the kind of people that deny mushroom imagery in Christian art.

pope Gordon says that if you assert mushroom imagery in Christian art, then you are a blundering ignoramus.

What a wonderful Christian, Wasson the deceiver.

what does Logos Media jan irvin have to say about these Christian values of Truth from Gordon . . . .🔍🧐🤔 Wasson ??

Evil Archons of this passing Age

when he tells you that Christianity means lying to people, it is quite clear from Gordon Lawson that Christianity means deceiving and lying to people.

Thanks a hell of a lot , oh wise “father of Ethnomycology”. INFINITE CONFLICT OF INTEREST –

Pope Wasson 🤥 has achieved levels of conflict of interest not even thought possible.

Dionysus and the Pirates

In my emails exchg w Houot, i claimed the best writing on nautical analogy myth of Dionysus & pirates is my site but that writing is hidden in idea development page 23:
https://egodeaththeory.org/2025/01/07/idea-development-23/#Pilot-Helmsman-Steersman-Begged-Dionysus – Find 32 hits on ‘dionysus’

For Houot’s benefit – (Cyberdisciple scoffs at BENEFIT) — i am considering making a page dedicated to honoring — –, Dionysus. As a pilot of Egodeath, honoring Dionysus. To honor the god is to not claim to be foundation source of one’s own control power; ivy disproves that; ssw sna {snake frozen in rock} ;

snake-shaped worldline frozen in rock
sswfr
sswfir

snake-shaped worldline
ssw

I advised A. M. Houot (WHOAH!; “Ooh-Oh”) to study several writeups of this myth cybernetic nautical – tho not a myth of scientific exploration & disco?

Secret Names of Scholars: Policy: Every Writer Gets Only Two Names: First & Last

SECRET – DO NOT TELL ANYONE: it’s Alan Houot

Alan Houot
amh

A. M. Houot

Egodeath Policy: everyone gets 2 names: first, last. That’s it. eg:

Dr. Professor Jose Bob Alfredo Gonzalez Celdran the Great –> Jose Celdran

Esteemed, Learned, Learned! Dr. Professor Jerry M. Brown the Third –>
Jerry Brown

I hate the early 2oth C convention – unhelpful – that I stupidly parrotted in the 2006 & 2007 articles:

Wasson and Allegro on the Tree of Knowledge as Amanita (Hoffman, 2006), http://egodeath.com/WassonEdenTree.htm

& mh07 main article, “J. I. Smith” – stupid, give us the damn first name ffs.

How does it help anyone to write J Z Smith instead of Johnathan Smith?

Errata in URL of WordPress copy of 2007 Main Article

“2006” should be “2007”; recently I determined that body of article was written 2006 but DIDN’T REACH ITS FINAL FORM until Sep. 2007:

The Entheogen Theory of Religion and Ego Death (Hoffman, 2007) – https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/the-entheogen-theory-of-religion-and-ego-death-2006-main-article/ – failed to copy the Intro from home page into article until Sep 2007.

The day after that, I found (like Josie Kins did recently, in article “Perception of Eternalism” in EffectIndex.com) the correct word, ‘eternalism’ instead of the wrong word, ‘determinism’ – fail.

Effect Index semi-404, Josie Kins – is this site toast/history, or what? Must Check Archive.org of effectindex.com

Archive.org of effectindex.com
https://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/effectindex.com
eg: 2024/09/14 —
https://web.archive.org/web/20240914113026/http://www.effectindex.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20240914113026mp_/http://www.effectindex.com/effects/perception-of-eternalism
https://web.archive.org/web/20240914113026mp_/http://www.effectindex.com/effects/perception-of-predeterminism – blank drats foiled again

alt path strategy: https://www.youtube.com/@josikinz

https://www.effectindex.com/effects/perception-of-eternalism 404

yet this works:

https://www.effectindex.com/people/josie

then nav from there to:
https://www.effectindex.com/effects/perception-of-eternalism
i don’t get it they look identical – am i seeing my own cached copy?

TRANSPERSONAL STATES

• Ego death
• Existential self-realization
• Perception of eternalism
• Perception of interdependent opposites
• Perception of predeterminism – blank for me at the moment WTF
• Perception of self-design
• Spirituality enhancement
• Unity and interconnectedness

The Entheogen Theory of Religion and Ego Death (Hoffman, 2007)
mh07

The Entheogen Theory of Religion and Ego Death (Hoffman, 2007) at http://egodeath.com/EntheogenTheoryOfReligion.htm & https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/the-entheogen-theory-of-religion-and-ego-death-2006-main-article/
mh07l

Granting Advanced Degrees in Transcendent Knowledge per the Egodeath theory per Cybermonk

— except for Max Freakout & Cyberdisciple & the other, skizzo guy who re-pointed me to Jan Irvin’s great work, who have the ultra rare honorary(?) (sounds like an insult; they earned PhD fair & square) degree, PhD in Transcendent Knowledge: they are strictly to be addressed as:

Esteemed Dr. Freakout, PhD TK

I cannot grant more PhDs, b/c:

• no time to vet ppl
• no one is worthy earned it as Cyberdisciple & Sir Freakout , but even if they did, no time to vet ppl.

idea: I am ok w idea of granting more PhD degrees in Transcendent Knowledge per the Egodeath theory.

In principle, every high school student takes 1 semester class to learn the Egodeath theory, and advanced degrees are granted in Masters’ in Transcendent Knowledge; PhD in Psychedelic Eternalism.

Night Fever Surrender to Psilocybin transformation – paste bk club summaries of my mission statement

WHAT LOOKS LIKE dread Dittrich’s Dread DED dimension, dread ETCLOC — the experience of the threat of catastrophic loss of control, on the ego, childish side of the gate, is transformation of ctrl: a 2-level relationshio w God the puppetmaster

we are not to be hubristic self assured control agents yet nor are we to avoid massive Kafei sized Max Freakout 3 Reallys high , Eight Reallys High:

God wants creatures to be rly high to know Him as Source of control, yet not hubristic self assured

like shamans right form of full active control , not egoic possibilism-premised control

in the peak state and afterwards we must utilize possibility thinking ego, egoic like possibilism-thinking , freewill thinking , BUT qualified possibilism-thinking

Justified Rectified Purified Egoic Control Thinking

2-level, dependent control

monolithic, autonomous control is now washed: known to be only virtual

use the branching model false virtual illusory local egoic POV but modded.

do not RELY on egoic premise re the foundation source of ctrl

to have stable ctrl, Use egoic freewill looking self control, but yet with a transformed, cleaned, redeemed, rectified, washed, washed clean foundation a new understanding of our source of control.

Our basis foundation is changed, although the visible upper layer of self control looks like it is free will premed but yet transformed foundation understood

image f 177 Great Canterbury Psalter

Cubensis Nonbranching Horses & Balancing on Right Leg (Image f177)

https://youtu.be/c65yR7FWJsM?si=t8t4mYcpxsKTSS7A

See Also

Gordon . . . .🔍🧐🤔 Wasson, example of what kind of person is pals with the Pope — MAKING Christianity LOOK BAD, GOOD JOB DEMON WASSON THE DECEIVER, achieving levels of conflict of interest not thought possible.

1. Wasson: “If you say there’s mushroom imagery in Christian art, you mycologists are blundering ignoramuses.”
2. Wasson: “You failed to consult the art world” / in the same paragraph: [shhh, I am covertly censoring the Brinckmann citation: Albert Brinckmann’s 1906 86-page book in German, Tree Stylizations in Medieval Paintings & two mushroom-trees pics sent by the world’s top art historian Panofsky, and – Brown astutely 2019 pointed out: withheld the 2nd Panofsky letter WHICH IS ABSOLUTELY INEXCUSABLE, Huggins, THERE IS NO EXCUSING THIS CHACANERY DUPLICITY COVER-UP OPERATION THAT YOU GUYS — YOUR SIDE — MICA Deniers — DID. How solid is your case, Ronald Huggins, given that Wasson resorted to HIDING academic publications, how can you excuse [cit his article page quote] this atrocious, INEXCUSABLE behavior on YOUR side, Huggins?? I am holding you guilty as Wasson’s defender. Wasson’s censorship PROVES he is lying and you MICA Deniers cannot win an honest debate so you have to resort to deception.] Art Historians are revealed to be liars, or on the side of a leading liar, Gordon . . . .🔍🧐🤔 Wasson; Art Historians are revealed to be defending Wasson’s duplicitouus censorship, “It’s ok” NO IT IS NOT OK, Huggins. YOU GUYS GOT A BIG PROBLEM, in the words of the worlds greatest exemplary historian, Thomas Hatsis.
3. I am the banker for the Pope and have private audience with him.
4. Andy Letcher book Shroom in 2006, quoted in The Holy Mushroom ji08: “Wasson says it, I believe it, that settles it.”
5. Ronald Huggins’ 2024 article “Foraging for Psychedelic Mushrooms in the Wrong Forest: The Great Canterbury Psalter as a Medieval Test Case” — “Wasson tried to force his pretended negative view on mycologists, but THAT’S OK, b/c as proved by fact that MICA Affirmers still were able to publish assertions of mushroom imagery in Christian art despite Wasson.”

keyboard shortcuts:

The Holy Mushroom: Evidence of Mushrooms in Judeo-Christianity (Jan Irvin, 2008) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1439215170
ji08l

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
rh24l

TODO: UPLOAD my ARTICLES TO ACADEMIA.EDU

Ronald Huggins’ 2024 article “Foraging Wrong”
rhfw

Michael Hoffman, 9:30 p.m., March 25, 2025

Contents:

• Motivation for this Post
• Official Relevant Definitions of the Negative and Positive Positions
• Quotes about the Database and Committee from Brown 2016
• Section about the Database and Committee from Brown 2019
• INTERDISCIPLINARY COMMITTEE ON PSYCHEDELIC GOSPELS
  • Call for an interdisciplinary committee
• Ruck’s “Social Drama Narrative” Tail Wagging the “Presence of Mushrooms” Dog
  • Forbidden Word List: mainstream, cult, secretly, oppression, hidden, secret cult, surreptitiously slipped in, communities, cults, groups, sects, heretical; “psychoactive mushrooms”, umbrella wildcard terms
  • The Habitual Attempt to Limit Entheogens, by 1st-gen entheogen scholarship
• The Database Includes the Accompanying Motifs of the Mushroom-Trees Genre: {mushrooms}, {branching}, {handedness}, and {stability} Motifs
• “Mushroom Imagery”, not “Images of Mushrooms”
  • Huggins’ Fake “Criteria to Decide” Is Actually a Sheer Decree of “Mushroom Features Don’t Count”
  • ⚔️
  • TOUCHE! LOL ⚔️
  • Criteria to decide whether a mushroom-tree is a mushroom or a tree: the tree features count, but the mushroom features don’t count – Because I Say So
  • Criteria to decide whether a mushroom-tree is a mushroom or a tree: the mushroom features count, but the tree features don’t count – Because I Say So
• Wasson’s paradox
• See Also

Motivation for this Post

• this page IS the db, vs:
• this site IS the db, vs:
• this page describes and articulates and embodies the CONCEPT of the Brown db
• this page serves as a concrete link; this page URL “is” the Brown [virtual] db.

Brown 2019: 0 hits on “database”, 1 hit on “catalog”: cataloguing – a verb.

Brown focuses on Committee and action too much, not concrete enough collection.

It’s easy to have a database.

Having a collection and doing collection, acting in a committee, is too hard, not happening.

‘database’ is more powerful than ‘catalog’.

I need to inspect and markup Browns’ description of the db, J Brown told me the present site is as close to their db proposed db as anything. that this site is the closest thing to their proposed db.

Browns’ writeup focuses more on the committee – which idea failed, no one has time to commit to that — than on the db.

This page addresses somehow those needs. after studying and summ’ing what Browns propose.

Official Relevant Definitions of the Negative and Positive Positions

https://egodeaththeory.org/2024/11/23/deniers-logical-fallacies-pilzbaum-mushroom-tree-debate/#Affirmers-Assertion

https://egodeaththeory.org/2024/11/23/deniers-logical-fallacies-pilzbaum-mushroom-tree-debate/#Deniers-Assertion

Deniers’ Logical Fallacies in the Pilzbaum (Mushroom Trees) Debate

Quotes about the Database and Committee from Brown 2016

Section about the Database and Committee from Brown 2019

14 hits on “committee” – all of them in section “INTERDISCIPLINARY COMMITTEE ON PSYCHEDELIC GOSPELS” (good news, a relief)

formatting: all the entire section, plain text, 1 sentence per paragraph.

todo: add bold, maybe delete some.

Browns write:

INTERDISCIPLINARY COMMITTEE ON PSYCHEDELIC GOSPELS

We have revisited the Wasson– Allegro controversy, presented iconographic evidence of entheogens in Christian art, and examined critiques of the psychedelic gospels theory.

In this context, we can now address Wasson’s paradox and the need for an Interdisciplinary Committee on the Psychedelic Gospels.

Call for an interdisciplinary committee

Samorini (1998 ) closes his survey of “ mushroom-trees”  in Christian art by stating that “we may confidently conclude from what has emerged that justifications do exist for serious and unprejudiced ethnomycological study of early Christian culture, and it is our hope that such studies will take place”  (p. 107).

Given the conflicting interpretations of entheogenic mushroom images in Christian art, and the controversial implications of the psychedelic gospels theory, there is an obvious need to establish sound methodologies and objective criteria for a rigorous, unbiased evaluation of this iconographic evidence.

Achieving this goal will require more than a de rigueur appeal for “additional studies.”

For this reason, we call for the establishment of an international Interdisciplinary Committee on the Psychedelic Gospels (Committee).

[should call for database, or define virtual database]

This Committee could be housed at a major university or museum and co-chaired by an ethnobotanist and church historian with relevant credentials.

It would be charged with collecting, cataloging, and curating potential psychoactive images in Christian art from around the world, and evaluating them for the presence of evidence indicating that they represent entheogenic species.

Toward this end, the Committee would integrate research methodologies from

• anthropology (fieldwork),
• art history (iconography, iconology),
• church history (textual analysis),
• ethnobotany (cultural uses of mushrooms),
• mycology (fungus identification), and theology (exegesis).

[the Egodeath theory/ the Mytheme theory; the Egodeath theory of psychedelic eternalism – this is THE way to explain branches/ ramification, as demanded by Panofsky-Huggins as their MAIN objection to the mushroom interp.]

The Committee would establish criteria for peer-review evaluation of critical questions.

Are the images clear and unambiguous enough to facilitate a definitive identifi cation of the genus and species of psychoactive mushroom?

[not just isolated mushroom motif; the genre is actually intending to … artists of the mushroom-trees genre do not intend to send msg “mushroom”; their actual msg is conveyed by the combination of {mushrooms}, {branching}, {handedness}, and {stability} motifs; to describe psychedelic eternalism; mental model transformation from possibilism to eternalism]

Or if the mushrooms shown are stylized mushrooms (such as “mushroom trees”), are there artistic traditions of interpretation that contribute to determining that they were intended to depict entheogenic species?

Does the art tradition and history surrounding the image enhance the determination of the intent to represent psychoactive mushrooms or other entheogens?

Are there relevant texts and/or other historical documents that corroborate these findings?

Unlike the political infighting that delayed publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls for decades, the workings of the Committee must be transparent.

The Judeo-Christian art images and religious texts in question should be made available online for public viewing and comment.

It is through this interdisciplinary peer-review process that the theory of the psychedelic gospels can be independently confirmed (or refuted) by the Committee, and thereby potentially gain credence in scientific and theological circles as well as among thought leaders, policy makers and the mainstream media.

/ end of section from Brown & Brown 2019

Ruck’s “Social Drama Narrative” Tail Wagging the “Presence of Mushrooms” Dog

Entheogens in Christian art: Wasson, Allegro, and the Psychedelic Gospels. Jerry Brown & Julie Brown (2019). Journal of Psychedelic Studies, Volume 3: Issue 2, pp. 142–163. https://doi.org/10.1556/2054.2019.019 – https://www.academia.edu/40412411/Entheogens_in_Christian_art_Wasson_Allegro_and_the_Psychedelic_Gospels

https://egodeaththeory.org/2025/01/07/panofskys-letters-to-wasson-transcribed/

Ruck Committee? we have a counter-committee!

The business of the Ruck Committee is wrong-agenda-driven:

Ritual retelling of tabu social drama narrative of suppression; strive to prevent real Christianity & mass of all people from having The Mushroom (kiddie Amanita) by laboring to construct a barrier wall between Amanita and society at large in Europe history.

The important thing is the morality tale not psychedelics, for Ruck Committee; 1st-generation entheogen scholarship (the Secret Amanita paradigm).

The Brown database is specifically 2nd-generation entheogen scholarship (the Explicit Psilocybin paradigm).

WE DO NOT PERMIT “SECRECY” NARRATIVE TAIL WAGGING THE PSYCHEDELIC EVIDENCE DOG.

THIS DB SIMPLY SAYS “MUSHROOM IS PRESENT” OR MUSHROOM IS USED, NOT “Secret Christian Amanita Cult”, the Amanita Primacy Fallacy, spinning a social drama narrative.

We do not use Browns’ word ‘secret’, nor ‘mainstream’.

Reject “oppressor vs oppressed” narrative driving entheogen scholarship, as was done by the Allegro-Ruck paradigm, for Allegro’s reason/motive/ agenda, nor Ruck Committee’s reason/ motivation / agenda/ project of wrapping around each piece of evidence a jail of framing that art piece as an “alien heretical invasion even into the very heart of the Institutional Big Bad Church”

— a social drama narrative which REPLACES & neutralizes every piece of mushroom imagery in Christian art, striving to keep it separate from the mass of Christendom population & practice by fabricating and concocting out of thin air, “heretical sects, members-only, strong walls”, “displayed blatantly in their places of worship”.

Citation: The Holy Mushroom, p. 104 Irvin objects to such premise.

Against the Assumption of Suppression of Psychedelics in Pre-Modernity (Cyberdisciple 2020)

p. 14 of “Conjuring Eden”, Ruck et al, Entheos 1, 2001:

p. 15 of “Conjuring Eden”, Ruck et al, Entheos 1, 2001: littered with words serving to isolate and restrict “The Mushroom” to imagined “groups” and construct a barrier wall.

I recently highlighted all the words that are abused to carry this premise of “barrier wall” – drawing a line w/ The Mushroom on one side of Ruck paradigm’s line, and Lacking The Mushroom on the other side of the Great Ruckian Barrier Wall:

Conjuring Eden: Art and the Entheogenic Vision of Paradise (Hoffman, Ruck & Staples, Entheos 1, 2001)

Forbidden Word List: mainstream, cult, secretly, oppression, hidden, secret cult, surreptitiously slipped in, communities, cults, groups, sects, heretical; “psychoactive mushrooms”, umbrella wildcard terms

No More Writing About Mushrooms, Entheogens, Classic Psychedelics, Visionary Plants, Plant Teachers, or Psychoactive Plants and Substances

Forbidden Word List for Effective Theory Construction in Psychedelics History and Psychedelic Pseudo Science

The Habitual Attempt to Limit Entheogens, by 1st-gen entheogen scholarship

but when irvin 2008 criticized Ruck’s attempt to limit The Mushroom to mysticism and heretical sects, and to do that, Irvin cited AstroSham 1, Irvin then had to himself hasten to delete his own effort in AstroSham 1 2006 to attempt to limit The Mushroom to “kings, priests, and the elite” – removed from AstroSham 2 2009.

p. 56 of “Daturas for the Virgin”, Ruck et al, Entheos 2, 2001

The Database Includes the Accompanying Motifs of the Mushroom-Trees Genre: {mushrooms}, {branching}, {handedness}, and {stability} Motifs

One way to define the Brown db is: the galleries from Irvin + Michael Hoffman + J Rush + Browns + Samorini = a virtual db.

The db must include {mushrooms}, {branching}, {handedness}, and {stability} motifs supplementing and surrounding and accompanying mushroom imagery in Christian art.

“Mushroom Imagery”, not “Images of Mushrooms”

MICA = mushroom imagery in Christian art

MICA = mushrooms in Christian art <– brittle; we are not saying “it is a mushroom”.

We are saying “it is mushroom features fragments imagery”.

b/c the dirty strategy of Ronald Huggins is “the image on the scale of entire tree does not match A mushroom, therefore, so, not a mushroom.”

But if we are intelliegent MICA Affirmers , we are not saying that “it is a mushroom” – idiotic brittle talk. Low IQ. Irrelvant.

Huggins’ Foraging Wrong article uses dirty opportunity to say “the whole image doesn’t exacly match A mushroom, so, not a mushroom, so, no mushroom imagery in Christian art.”

It is crucial for the good guys, us MICA Affirmers, to explicitly control the definitions of the neg & pos position.

Forget Hugs’ defs; forget the MICA Deniers’ stupid position slip-n-slide definition shell games.

Only use my, relevant & productive, STABLE definitions of the two position.

Huggins: *I* am dictating to *you* what YOUR position is.

*I* am the one who is proactively strawmanning YOU.

*I* control the terms of debate; not you.

I reject the debate positions & concerns & framings as expressed by MICA Deniers.

Huggins’ Fake “Criteria to Decide” Is Actually a Sheer Decree of “Mushroom Features Don’t Count”

Left to Huggins , we have trash quality of pseudo arg’n like Huggins writing:

“Panofsky lets us articulate criteria to decide whetehre it is a tree or it is a mushroom” – brain dead pseudo-argument masking a sheer arbitrary decree.

What Huggins then does is list these so-called “critieria”; LEARNED, LEARNED!, so learned, a long list of criteria (a posturing put-on, pretense):

• if it has branch
• if it looks like tree
• if it has any tree features
• if …
• if …

Then, I dictate (says Huggins), arb’ly, that all mushroom-trees mean tree, not mushroom.

Countering Huggins’ bunk non-arg w/ its opposite:

But Huggins, *I* counter-dictate:

The mushroom features fragmentary aspects of mushroom-trees “RULES OUT” (Huggins’ stupid term thrown about as if a real arg) tree.

To throw Huggins bunk arg’n back in his face,

The mushroom features rule out tree.

⚔️

Touche, Huggins. By your own bunk junk arg.

Oh but let me frame that the same stupid way as Huggins builds up in the paragraph in the Conclusion section of Huggins’ Foraging Wrong article:

Panofsky’s argument allows us to articulate criteria to decide for a given image whether it is a tree or it is a mushroom:

• If the image has any mushroom-shaped caps, then it is a mushroom, not a tree.
• If the image has any mushroom-colored, blue stem, then it is a mushroom, not a tree.
• If the image has any branch that is shaped like a mushroom, then it is a mushroom, not a tree.

TOUCHE! LOL ⚔️

GARBAGE ARG’N FROM MICA Deniers, TYPICAL.

I’m as good as Ronald Huggins at “articulating criteria to decide”, equally arb’ly. What posturing.

Is this supposed to be argumentation, Huggins? “articulating criteria to decide”?

Criteria to decide whether a mushroom-tree is a mushroom or a tree: the tree features count, but the mushroom features don’t count – Because I Say So

Criteria to decide whether a mushroom-tree is a mushroom or a tree: the mushroom features count, but the tree features don’t count – Because I Say So

You mean, criteria to issue a blanket proclamation that in every instance, given mushroom features + tree features – ie, what you art historians call mushroom-trees – YOUR term —

You art historians, MICA Deniers, proclaim that the tree features count, but the mushroom features don’t count – because you proclaim so, without any basis other than, “branches need to be explained.”

Which is DONE.

In fact, we know that mushroom-trees cannot possibly mean trees, b/c they have mushroom features.

Mushroom-trees definitely do not and cannot mean trees, and in fact mushroom-trees do not ultimately mean trees.

In fact, mushroom-trees more mean literal mushrooms than they mean literal trees.

Mushroom-trees ultimately mean experience of non-branching from Psilocybin.

Mushroom-trees do not ultimately mean tree OR mushroom.

So, a FALSE DILEMMA FALLACY thanks to big-brain Huggins and the scoundrel MICA Deniers who apologized for, ie defend – Wasson’s fraudulent, obstructionist behavior, on the excuse that:

“Wasson didn’t prevent MICA Affirmers from affirming mushroom imagery in Christian art, publishing such assertions post-Wasson.

“So, academic fraud and obstructionism: THIS IS FINE”, says Huggins.

Penalty: I charge Huggins as responsible for Wasson’s fraud.

Huggins must disavow, let’s see Hug disavow:

I demand that Huggins RETRACTS his defense of Wasson’s bullying tactics & duplicity, which Irvin complains about, as reported by Huggins’ Foraging Wrong article.

The good thing from Panofsky-Huggins is, they inquire of us MICA Affirmers: Must explain branches. DONE.

… … That’s his so-called “enables us to articulate criteria to decide whether it is a tree or it is a mushroom”.

Huggins’ “articulate criteria to decide” is pure bullsh*t!

The Panofsky-Huggins argument REALLY is:

“Until MICA Affirmers explain branches, we are not convinced.”

Solved. Done. See present site;

Branches — and you are blind to more important non-branching motif — means the peak Psilocybin experience of mental model transformation from possibilism to eternalism .

That is why we MICA Affirmers reject any position definition games from the MICA Deniers, and we take charge of both positions definitions.

HERE is the specific postition we argue against and disprove, and, here is the position that we hold.

Not like Ruck says on p. 56 of “Daturas for the Virgin”, Ruck et al, Entheos 2, 2001 , “they are mushrooms and nothing else” – a poor statement of the MICA Affirmers position.

MICA Affirmers do NOT say mushroom-trees are “mushrooms and nothing else”, like Ruck Committee 2001 says on p. 56 “Daturas for the Virgin”.

See my page for the sane, relevant, two position definitions (for & against), at 3 levels of detail.

Ignore the stupid, shifting, shell-game position definitions from MICA Deniers such as “decide if it is a tree of it is a mushroom” – irrelvant brain-dead fallacious arg’n FALSE DILEMMA.

The usual lack of concern — as usual, as typical:

Characteristic of MICA Deniers is they don’t care about good arg’n.

MICA Deniers stoop and are ok with being associated with obviously bad arg’n.

MICA Deniers are ok w/ being known for bad arg’n and heap of fallacious arg’n, all of the fallacies all at once.

They’re fine putting that forth and associating themselves w/ fallacious arg’n: they solve that by doing more of it, which is really, arg’n from prejudice:

If I’m a MICA Denier and my lips are moving, that is to be taken as “valid arg’n”, given the un-level playing field of extreme bias against MICA Affirmers.

Just throw at the wall, more and more junk arg’n, none valid, but that’s ok.

“articulate criteria to decide” — GTFO! what b.s.! not even an arg!

It’s just a dictate , sweeping, that NO mushroom-trees are “a mushroom”, disguised and foisted as if an arg, but actually it is just a decree:

Huggins’ Conclusion paragraph is really just a position statement repeated: “My position is that mushroom-trees are not a mushroom but are instead a tree.”

But Huggins pretends to be “articulating criteria to decide whether YADA YADA, BS, BS” – typical fallacious arg’n from MICA Deniers that they are notorious for.

If MICA Affirmers are characteristically notorious for (rightly) ignoring art historians,

MICA Deniers are characteristically notorious for shamelessly putting forth Bad Arg’n that amount to arg’n from prejudice.

MICA Deniers only have 1 good point:

MICA Deniers have only 1 valid objection to mushroom imagery in Christian art: the MICA Affirmers must explain the branches motif of mushroom-trees. DONE.

Deniers’ Logical Fallacies in the Pilzbaum (Mushroom Trees) Debate

Wasson’s paradox

(moved out from Interdisc. section – awesome but tangential)

Browns write:

In our book, we state that “In our opinion Wasson’s greatest paradox was this: the discrepancy between his zealous exploration of a controversial theory about the role of entheogens in early religion and his reluctance to pursue this theory past the portals of the church and into the hallowed halls of Christianity”  (Brown & Brown, 2016, p. 7).

This paradox is especially poignant in the case of the Eden fresco at Plaincourault.

Here, Samorini (1998 ) remarks that “It is therefore quite strange that the father of ethnomycology stopped before the lapidary appraisal of an art historian and did not, instead follow the trail of additional ‘mushroom-tree’ representations in Roman and Christian art as he might have done or scheduled”  (p. 31).

Given his reputation as an indefatigable seeker of sacred mushrooms, why did Wasson not travel a mere 6 miles west of Plaincourault to Saint Savin (Figure 5 ) or 50 miles east to SaintMartin’ s (Figure 8 ) where he would have undoubtedly discovered additional examples of entheogens in Christian art? Several explanations of this egregious oversight have been suggested.

Samorini (1998 ) proposes that Wasson’ s reluctance grew out of a realistic concern that acknowledging any  evidence in support of “ Allegro’ s sensational thesis”  would deal “a serious blow to the new science of ethnomycology of entheogenic mushrooms”  (p. 32).

Early in our research, we wondered if as the son of an Episcopalian minister, Wasson felt “a filial allegiance to his father and a loyalty to the church”  (Brown & Brown, 2016 , p. 7).

While these may be contributing factors, we later uncovered a more compelling explanation.

During our 2012 visit to the Vatican Museum in Rome, we were inspired to Google the words “ Wasson, Vatican” which immediately produced several search items including one that said “Wasson was an account manager to the Pope and Vatican for J.P. Morgan” (Irvin, 2012 ).

Wasson joined the Wall Street investment banking firm of J.P. Morgan in 1934, where he helped develop the new fi eld of banking public relations.

Upon further research, we found that Wasson’ s direct financial involvement with the Vatican was confi rmed by DeWitt Peterkin, a retired J.P. Morgan, Vice President.

In an interview for The Sacred Mushroom Seeker , a book of essays in tribute to Wasson, Peterkin reveals that “Unbeknown to most people, we were for many years one of the bankers for the Vatican . . .

And Gordon used to have private audiences with the Pope” 

(Riedlinger, 1997b , p. 51).

Wasson never mentions his role as a Vatican banker in his writings.

This role provides a clear fi nancial motive for Wasson’ s reluctance to explore entheogens in Christian art.

This may have been reinforced by a legally binding confi dentiality and non-disclosure agreement between banker (J.P. Morgan) and client (the Vatican), given that such agreements are common in the investment banking field.

Regardless of motive, due to Wasson’ s preeminent position as a leading authority on the study of entheogens and religion, this lack of disclosure was especially damaging to the nascent field of ethnomycology.

In effect, Wasson’s lack of transparency combined with his relentless personal and professional attacks on Allegro stymied widespread scholarly inquiry into the study of entheogens and Christianity for nearly half a century.

/ end of section by Browns, moved out from Interdisc. section

See Also

glad to see Brown cite Irvin Secret History of Magic Mushrooms article series 2012 – surprised this doesn’t redir to Irvin new site domain, Logos media:
https://www.gnosticmedia.com/SecretHistoryMagicMushroomsProject –
better is:
https://logosmedia.com/SecretHistoryMagicMushroomsProject

Brown links to Michael Hoffman / cites:
Egodeath.com,
Wasson and Allegro on the Tree of Knowledge as Amanita (Hoffman, 2006), http://egodeath.com/WassonEdenTree.htm

Tree Stylizations in Medieval Paintings (Brinckmann 1906) – citations include:
Baumstilisierungen in der mittelalterlichen Malerei
(Tree Stylizations in Medieval Paintings)
Albert Erich Brinckmann, 1906
86 pages
https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_8AgwAAAAYAAJ/mode/2up

Letters of Erwin Panofsky to R. Gordon Wasson, May 2 & May 12, 1952. Wasson Archives, Harvard University Herbarium, Cambridge, Mass. Tina and R. Gordon Wasson Ethnomycological Collection Archives, ecb00001, series IV, drawer W3.2, folder 20. Botany Libraries, Economic Botany Library of Oakes Ames, Harvard University.

The letters were first published by Jerry Brown & Julie Brown (2019). Entheogens in Christian art: Wasson, Allegro, and the Psychedelic Gospels. Journal of Psychedelic Studies, Volume 3: Issue 2, pp. 142–163. https://doi.org/10.1556/2054.2019.019 – https://www.academia.edu/40412411/Entheogens_in_Christian_art_Wasson_Allegro_and_the_Psychedelic_Gospels

_{Site Map > Panofsky}

Deniers’ Logical Fallacies in the Pilzbaum (Mushroom Trees) Debate

Foraging for Psychedelic Mushrooms in the Wrong Forest (Huggins 2024)

Site Map section:
https://egodeaththeory.org/nav/#gallery

Site Map section:
https://egodeaththeory.org/nav/#flagship-Mushrooms-Greek-Christian-Art

Michael Hoffman, March 25, 2025

_{Site Map: Astral Ascent Mysticism}

Contents:

• Motivation for this Page
• The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World (Ulansey, 1991)
  • David Ulansey’s The Eighth Gate: The Mithraic Lion-Headed Figure and the Platonic World-Soul
• The Eighth Gate: The Mithraic Lion-Headed Figure and the Platonic World-Soul
• David Ulansey
• The Ancient World, Vol. XXXIV, no. 1 (2003), pp. 67-81
• Notes —
  • RETURN TO THE COSMIC MYSTERIES OF MITHRAS
    • David Ulansey’s Mithras and the Hypercosmic Sun
• MITHRAS AND THE HYPERCOSMIC SUN
• David Ulansey’s Home Page
• See Also

Incoming

33:48 – David Ulansey says the art is WRONG, modern corruption, one torch should be aimed up. If the data doesn’t match the theory, then too bad for the data, the theory is correct. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezr71f2z7po&t=1661s David Ulansey – The Cosmic Mysteries of Mithras

dreamlion

Jun 24, 2021

“Video of a public slide-lecture by David Ulansey on Mithraism, based on his book “The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World” (Oxford University Press).” 5255 arm sph band

1 13 30 mushrooms above cart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezr71f2z7po —

Search YouTube for David Ulansey:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=david+ulansey

Motivation for this Page

Debating which to do – these would be two different pages/ types of pages for different purposes, to be used differently.

• Make accurate backup of his two articles; clone his pages.b/c his site was down end of 2024.
• Only retain key phrases. <– this is what I’m needing; my present purpose. Not to archive his articles.

Able to Find across both articles at once:

• snake __ hits
• serpent __ hits
• drink __ hits
• eat __ hits
• food
• leg
• foot
• bent
• beverage
• drug
• plant
• entheogen
• mushroom
• meal __ hits
• transcend __ hits
• altered __ hits
• heimarmene __ hits
• determinism __ hits
• fate __ hits
• 9th __ hits
• ninth __ hits
• ennead __ hits
• precession __ hits
• rock __ hits
• free __ hits
• slave __ hits
• frozen – __ hits

Amazingly, I have no pages titled Ulansey at this site, d/k about Egodeath.com.

Houot sample Amazon find ‘surrender’: Rise of the Psychonaut:

Again look for other relevant articles at his site. This time, I have this page to be able to re-find my notes later.

I have posted some sort of list of his articles that are of top interest for the Egodeath theory.

I got his book Feb 16, 2001, which is after Coraxo in the the Gnosticism Yahoo Group was my first encounter w/ Late Antiquity’s focus on “transcend heimarmene”, and before my June 2001 start of the Egodeath Yahoo Group.

• ~2000 Coraxo in the the Gnosticism Yahoo Group was my first encounter w/ Late Antiquity’s focus on “transcend heimarmene”
• I got Ulansey’s book Feb 16, 2001.
• June 2001 start of the Egodeath Yahoo Group.

todo: When did i realize that my Feb. 1997 2-level Core Egodeath theory required adding the concept of “transcend heimarmene”?

When I read Coraxo’s post at Gnosticism Yahoo Group, I immediately started theorizing about 2-level vs. 3-level model; aiming for eternalism vs. aiming above eternalism.

Aiming for my precious block-universe determinism vs. aiming above it, Coraxo rightly insulting my first theory [expression of theory] by pointing out its inability to discuss Gnosticism’s goal of transcending heimarmene.

The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World (Ulansey, 1991)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0195067886 —

I always link to his two articles

David Ulansey’s solution explaining Mithraism

keyboard shortcuts

d u 8 t h

d u h y p

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

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

David Ulansey’s The Eighth Gate: The Mithraic Lion-Headed Figure and the Platonic World-Soul

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

http://www.mysterium.com/eighthgate.html

8th & Hyp hypercosmic, 8th sphere / gate, but THE MAIN GATE IS INTO 100% ETERNALISM.

Mainly, mental model transformation is into eternalism – which includes the nuance of “transcend eternalism”. There is no way I’d say the 3-level, 3-phase model is basic. The 2-level model is basic: reborn from possibilism to eternalism.

Rising afterwards above eternalism is a detail.

The 3-level model is parasitical piggybacked dependent on first undegoing the 2-level model.

The first discovery in blotter Rock 1965-1995 is eternalism — NOT transcending eternalism.

The way you recognize blotter Rock is the motif of no-free-will/ eternalism; NOT some Late Antiquity type of motif of “transcend eternalism”, like … Rush song Cygnus IX: after black hole, there’s more.

8th gate is from 8th to 9th sphere

• 0th gate: from Earth (sublunar) to Moon onion layer.
  Strange there’s no ladder rung or gate to get TO Moon (sphere 1).
• 1st gate: from Moon to Mercury.
• 2nd gate: Mercury to Venus.
• 3rd gate: from Venus to Sun.
• 4th gate: from Sun to Mars.
• 5th gate: from Mars to Jupiter.
• 6th gate: from Jupiter to Saturn onion layer.
• 7th gate: from top of Saturn onion layer to bottom of fixed stars onion layer.
• 8th gate: from top of fixed stars onion layer to bottom of precession Ennead layer sphere 9.
• 9th gate: from top of of precession Ennead layer sphere 9, to bottom of Empyrean w/ God and Elect (sphere 10). THE SPHERE OF THE HYPERCOSMIC SUN

list of crops of {sun light} in Great Canterbury Psalter
https://egodeaththeory.org/2025/01/11/letchers-false-citation-various-writers-have-suggested-cult-secretly-oppression-hidden-secret-cult-for-example-stamets-gartz/#fire-light-circle-sun

The Eighth Gate: The Mithraic Lion-Headed Figure and the Platonic World-Soul

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

David Ulansey

The Ancient World, Vol. XXXIV, no. 1 (2003), pp. 67-81

RETURN TO HOME OF DAVID ULANSEY

PLAN: REMOVE MUCH/ CONDENSE, ADD BOLD ON KEY PHRASES

In the Barberini mithraeum in Rome (CIMRM* 390), a serpent-entwined figure standing on a globe is depicted floating in the center of a zodiac which arches above the bull-slaying scene. Or, to be more precise, the globe on which the figure is standing is located in the zodiac, while the figure’s body extends above the zodiac into the region just beyond it (see Figs. 1,2,3).

Fig. 1: Barberini tauroctony (CIMRM 390)

Fig 2: The lion-headed figure in the Barberini tauroctony with zodiac
and fire-altars (detail)

Fig 3: The lion-headed figure in the Barberini tauroctony (detail)

Although his head is unfortunately damaged, this figure is undoubtedly the famous Mithraic leontocephaline or lion-headed figure, who is always depicted with a snake winding around him. His position here precisely at the level of the zodiac and just beyond is intriguing, for it suggests that there is a special connection between the leontocephaline and the region of the zodiac. This connection is confirmed by the fact that the body of the leontocephaline is often decorated with the zodiac (e.g., CIMRM 545 and 879; see Fig. 4) or stands on a globe representing the sphere of the fixed stars, on which of course the zodiac is located (CIMRM 382, 390, 543, 551, 1051, 1705, 2320; see Fig. 5).

Fig. 4: Torso of lion-headed figure with zodiac (CIMRM 879)

Fig. 5: Lion-headed figure standing on cosmic sphere
and holding key in right hand (CIMRM 543)

This connection between the leontocephaline and the zodiac can be clarified by noticing that in Origen’s Contra Celsum, Celsus describes a Mithraic symbol consisting of a ladder with seven gates, each associated with one of the seven planets, while at the top there is an eighth gate associated with the sphere of the fixed stars and leading to the region beyond that sphere (VI:22). The leontocephaline, as is well-known, almost always holds a key (according to Maarten Vermaseren he does so in the Barberini painting, although it is difficult to see [1]), and this key is reasonably identified as the key to the celestial gates described by Celsus. However, since the leontocephaline is never linked in Mithraic iconography with any of the planets, but is clearly associated with the zodiac, it seems likely that he has a special connection with Celsus’ eighth gate– that of the sphere of the fixed stars and the realm beyond it– since it is on that sphere that the zodiac lies.

In addition, the painting at Barberini depicts the region outside of the zodiac– into which the leontocephaline’s body extends– in a specific way: above the zodiac is an arch containing a row of six altars with fires burning on them (see again Figs. 1,2,3). Scholars have often assumed that these fires represent the planets.[2] However, there are two decisive arguments against this explanation. First, the fires are depicted as lying beyond the zodiac, which is of course contrary to all Greco-Roman astronomy, in which the planets are understood as being closer to the earth than is the sphere of the fixed stars on which the zodiac is located. And second, of course, there are only six fires, while the planets are always seven in number. In response to the problem of there being only six fires, it has been suggested that the leontocephaline either hides or substitutes for a seventh fire.[3] However, this suggestion is untenable, since in CIMRM 368, a Roman relief from the Esquiline remarkably resembling the Barberini painting, there are clearly only six fire-altars above Mithras (see Fig. 6). In fact, there also exist tauroctonies in which there are nine fire-altars (CIMRM 1128) or four fire-altars (CIMRM 1816) above Mithras, indicating that the specific number of altars was not fixed.

Fig. 6: Esquiline Tauroctony (CIMRM 368)

The comparison between the Esquiline relief and the Barberini painting reveals two interesting facts. First, the comparison makes absolutely certain that the Mithraists understood the cave in which Mithras kills the bull as symbolizing the cosmos, since in the Esquiline relief the arch separating Mithras from the six fires above is the roof of the cave, while in the Barberini painting exactly the same position and role are filled by the arch of the zodiac.

Second, the Esquiline relief also includes a second set of fire-altars, this time indeed numbering seven, at the very bottom of the image. Most scholars are now agreed that the animal figures in the bull-slaying icon represent a series of constellations located on the sphere of the fixed stars. Thus the seven fires placed in the Esquiline relief below the bull-slaying — that is, below the sphere of the fixed stars– are in the proper astronomical location for the planets. Thus the lower set of fires agrees both in number and position with the planets, and thus most likely does represent the planets, while the upper set of fires does not fit with the planets either in number or in position.

But if the six upper fires in the Esquiline relief and the Barberini painting do not represent the planets, what do they represent? An obvious answer to this question is immediately apparent if we merely take seriously the fact that the fires in the Barberini painting are clearly located outside of the zodiac, and hence beyond the sphere of the fixed stars. For throughout antiquity there existed a widespread belief that the outermost region of the cosmos was occupied by a realm of fire.

Deriving from the experience of the light-giving quality of the stars and planets, the light- and heat-producing quality of the sun, and the upward-moving tendency of fire, the earliest Greek philosophers already identified the sky as a realm of fire. As Charles Kahn says, “Both Parmenides and Anaxagoras seem to have identified the aither or sky with elemental fire….” and Anaximander’s cosmology seems to have placed a sphere of flame at the outer boundary of the universe.[4] The Pythagorean Philolaus appears to have held a similar opinion, since according to Aetius he said that in addition to the existence of a fiery “hearth” at the center of the universe there is “…again another fire at the uppermost place, surrounding the whole.”[5]

Plato as well seems to have adopted the idea of fire as existing in the furthest region of the cosmos in Timaeus 62D-63E, since, as F.M Cornford notes in his commentary on this passage, for Plato the elements are here understood as arranged “in a definite order: fire around the circumference (where it is the chief constituent of the stars’ bodies), next the spheres of air and water, and earth at the center.”[6]

The idea of a fire at the outermost boundary of the universe later became a commonplace in Stoic thought. Cleanthes, for example, according to Cicero taught that “the most unquestionable deity is that remote all-surrounding fiery atmosphere called the aether, which encircles and embraces the universe on its outer side at an exceedingly lofty altitude.”[7] Chrysippus, notes David E. Hahm, speaks of “the aether, which is the name he gives to the fire at the periphery of the cosmos.”[8]

Among the Middle and Neo-Platonists there was also a widespread belief that the outermost region of reality was a fiery domain. Based on Plato’s famous allegory of the cave and of the sun-filled realm outside of it, the doctrine arose that beyond the universe– in the “place beyond the heavens” (hyperouranios topos) of Phaedrus 247B-C– there existed a hypercosmic sun or light (I have discussed this in detail in my article “Mithras and the Hypercosmic Sun”[9]). An early example is found in Philo’s De Opificio Mundi VIII.31, where he speaks of

a star above the heavens, the source of those stars which are perceptible by the external sense, and if any one were to call it universal light he would not be very wrong; since it is from that the sun and moon, and all the other planets and fixed stars derive their due light….[10]

And a bit further on, in XXIII 69-71, Philo pictures a mind journeying through the world and then up through the heavenly spheres until it passes the outermost boundary of the universe, at which point “rays of divine light are poured forth upon it like a torrent, so as to bewilder the eyes of its intelligence by their splendour.”[11]

Finally, an exact parallel to the picture in the Barberini mithraeum of a fiery realm outside the cosmos is found in the Chaldaean Oracles. In the Chaldaean cosmology the highest world is beyond the cosmic sphere (hyperkosmios or hyperouranios)[12] and is called the fiery cosmos or the “Empyrean” realm (kosmos pyrios or empyrios).[13]

Given all of this evidence for the ancient belief in the presence of a fiery realm at the outermost place in the universe, the depiction in the Barberini painting of fires just outside the boundary of the cosmos makes perfect sense. Indeed, additional support for a connection between the leontocephaline and the aetherial cosmic fire can be found in the fact that the Mithraic leontocephaline, as is well known, is frequently associated with fire-symbolism in a variety of ways, extending even to the existence of statues of the leontocephaline apparently designed so that fire could be sent shooting out of its mouth.[14]

However, an additional factor in the Barberini painting may help us gain further clarity about the significance of the Mithraic leontocephaline. It is notable that the placement of the leontocephaline at Barberini seems designed to emphasize the concepts of boundary and boundary-crossing. The globe on which the figure stands is located exactly on the arching zodiacal boundary of the universe, while the figure itself extends beyond that boundary as a kind of incarnation of the process of boundary-crossing.

If the leontocephaline, as I would like to suggest, does have a connection with the idea of a cosmic boundary, then crucial pieces of his cryptic symbolism take on a new importance. Perhaps most obvious is the key that he almost always holds, for the key is one of the most appropriate of all symbols of boundaries and boundary-crossing. Thus the goddess Hekate, mistress of boundaries and crossroads, was from Hellenistic times on often associated with the symbol of the key.[15] And in his work On the Genius of Socrates 591 A-C, Plutarch describes how the three Fates guard the thresholds between cosmic realms, each of them holding a key. Significantly, the first of these cosmic thresholds, presided over by the Fate Atropos, is that which separates what is outside the cosmic sphere from what is inside it.[16]

The key held by the Mithraic leontocephaline, then, indicates his role as a type of boundary guardian: specifically, as we have seen, the Barberini symbolism shows that he is associated with the boundary between what is inside and what is outside the cosmic sphere. But what could be the significance of this boundary such that the Mithraists were motivated to personify it in the form of a powerful divine being?

An answer to this question can be found in the fact that the Mithraists were surprisingly not alone in the seemingly peculiar act of personifying the cosmic boundary. For in the Chaldaean Oracles (where, as we saw earlier, it is taught that there exists beyond the universe a realm of fire) the boundary between the cosmos and what is beyond was personified in the figure of the goddess Hekate, a central divinity in the Oracles’ religious system.[17]

The figure of Hekate in the Chaldaean Oracles derives ultimately from speculations on Plato’s description of the World-Soul in his dialogue Timaeus. There, Plato says that the Demiurge– the creator of the universe– as part of the process of creation made a soul for the cosmos as a whole. Plato says that the Demiurge set this “World-Soul” in the center of the cosmos “and caused it to extend throughout the whole and further wrapped [the body of the cosmos] round with soul on the outside….”[18]

The World-Soul of Plato became the object of extraordinarily complex and far-reaching speculations in subsequent Platonic and other Greek philosophy, but it always retained its role as the boundary of the cosmos and the mediator between the cosmos and the realm beyond. The fact that in the Chaldaean Oracles this abstract entity became personified as the goddess Hekate shows that it is at least plausible that the Mithraic leontocephaline could represent a similar personification of the cosmic boundary. And, we should note, this plausibility is strengthened significantly by the fact that the Chaldaean Hekate, like the Mithraic leontocephaline, is constantly associated with an array of symbols involving fire.[19]

But the key piece of evidence supporting our hypothesis that the leontocephaline is a symbol of the cosmic boundary, and that he is linked, like the Chaldaean Hekate, to the Platonic World-Soul, lies in the most consistent of all of the attributes of the leontocephaline: namely, the snake that is almost always shown wrapped around him.

Many explanations for the presence of the snake wrapped around the leontocephaline have been offered, focusing on the snake as a solar symbol, as a symbol for cosmic time, or as a symbol of the celestial ascent of the soul.[20] However, the connection between the leontocephaline and the cosmic boundary and World-Soul that we have been tracing here suggests an additional factor: for there exists solid evidence that the World-Soul in its role as boundary of the universe was sometimes symbolized as a serpent.

This evidence is found in Origen’s Contra Celsum, immediately following his discussion of the Mithraic eight-gated ladder. In Book VI, chaps. 24ff., Origen discusses the teachings of the Gnostic sect of the Ophites or serpent-worshippers as expressed in certain diagrams of theirs. In one of these diagrams, he says, was “a drawing of ten circles, which were separated from one another and held together by a single circle, which was said to be the soul of the universe and was called Leviathan.”[21] Origen goes on to explain that this Leviathan is a great serpent, symbolizing the soul that permeates the universe. That this serpent specifically represents Plato’s World-Soul is proven by the fact that according to Origen the diagram showed Leviathan twice, once in the center and once around the circumference, just as in the Timaeus Plato said that the World-Soul was placed in the center of the cosmos and also wrapped around the outside. Other Gnostic systems also made use of this symbol of a serpent wrapped around the outside of the universe: according to the Pistis Sophia, “The outer darkness is a great dragon, whose tail is in his mouth, outside the whole world and surrounding the whole world.”[22]

Here we see the Platonic World-Soul as boundary of the cosmos symbolized by an encircling serpent. The parallel with the Mithraic leontocephaline as the serpent-entwined symbol of the cosmic boundary is, of course, compelling. But there is one final piece of evidence that is, I think, decisive. For there is in Mithraic iconography another figure besides the leontocephaline who is depicted as entwined by a serpent: namely, the god Oceanus. Oceanus is often depicted in the tauroctony beside the image of Mithras ascending in the chariot of the sun, and is easily identifiable by associated watery symbols such as waves, a boat, an oar, a vase, or a sail (see Fig. 7).[23] However, a number of times the figure beside the image of Mithras in the chariot is depicted as entwined by a serpent in exactly the same way as the leontocephaline (see Fig. 8).[24] As Manfred Clauss and M.L. West have noted, this serpent-entwined figure must also be Oceanus.[25] But why is he entwined by a snake exactly like the leontocephaline?

Fig. 7: Oceanus (on right) with waves and holding sail over head (CIMRM 2244)

Fig. 8: Oceanus (on right) entwined in serpent (CIMRM 1958)

Our discovery of the leontocephaline’s connection with the boundary of the cosmic sphere provides an obvious answer to this question, for of course the most important function of Oceanus in antiquity was as a symbol of the outermost circular boundary of the world.[26] The fact that both the leontocephaline and Oceanus are identically entwined by a serpent, therefore, makes perfect sense: the serpent around each of them symbolizes their roles as ultimate boundaries. And, conversely, the fact that in Mithraic iconography Oceanus– the boundary of the world– is entwined by a serpent provides remarkable support for my claim that the serpent-entwined leontocephaline also symbolizes the cosmic boundary– and hence the Platonic World-Soul– as indicated by the Barberini painting.

One last piece of evidence in this connection is worth noting. In the Acts of Thomas, the same text that includes the famous Gnostic Hymn of the Pearl, the apostle Thomas is confronted by a serpent. The serpent speaks to him, and at one point says, “I am son of him who girds the sphere about; and I am kinsman of him who is outside the ocean, whose tail is set in his own mouth.”[27] Here, exactly as in the Mithraic evidence, we find an enclosing serpent related simultaneously to the world-containing ocean and to the boundary of the cosmic sphere.

I will close by noting that if the leontocephaline did indeed function partly as a symbol for the ultimate boundary of the universe, this would be in complete harmony with the theory I proposed in my book The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries[28] that Mithraism began as a religious response to Hipparchus’s discovery of the precession of the equinoxes. For if Mithras represented the force responsible for moving the entire cosmic sphere in the way revealed by Hipparchus’s discovery, then he must have been understood as being a divinity whose essential power lay in the hypercosmic realm. As a result, it is easy to see how a symbol for the division between the cosmic and hypercosmic realms would have come to play an important role in the iconographical repertoire of his worship.

— Notes —

*CIMRM refers to Martin Vermaseren, Corpus Inscriptionum et Monumentorum Religionis Mithriacae (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1956, 1960) 2 vols.

[1] M.J. Vermaseren, Mithriaca III: The Mithraeum at Marino (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1982) p. 85.

[2] See Roger Beck, Planetary Gods and Planetary Orders in the Mysteries of Mithras (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1988) s.v. index I.A.1, #390.

[3] Ibid., p. 32.

[4] Charles H. Kahn, Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology (Philadelphia: Centrum Philadelphia, 1985) pp. 90-91.

[5] DK A16 (=Aetius 2.7.7), trans. Carl A. Huffman, Philolaus of Croton (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993) pp. 237-8.

[6] F.M Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1937) p. 265.

[7] De Natura Deorum I.37, trans. H. Rackam, Cicero: De Natura Deorum (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1933) p. 41.

[8] David E. Hahm, The Origins of Stoic Cosmology (Ohio State Univ. Press, 1977) p. 158.

[9] David Ulansey, “Mithras and the Hypercosmic Sun” in John R. Hinnells, Studies in Mithraism (Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider, 1994) pp. 257-64.

[10] Trans. C. D. Yonge, The Works of Philo (Hendrickson Publ., Inc., 1993) p. 6.

[11] Ibid., p. 11.

[12] Hans Lewy, Chaldaean Oracles and Theurgy (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1978), p. 151 nn. 311-313, p. 328 nn. 57-8.

[13] Ibid., pp. 77 and n. 40, 137 and n. 270, 201-3, 430-1.

[14] For the fire-breathing of the leontocephaline see Howard Jackson, “The Meaning and Function of the Leontocephaline in Roman Mithraism,” Numen 32.1 (July, 1985) p. 28; CIMRM 383 shows the leonotocephaline igniting a fire altar with his breath while holding a torch in each hand. For other fire symbols associated with the leontocephaline see CIMRM 103, 383, 589 (torches); 312 (thunderbolt, hammer and tongs); and 1123 (fire shovel).

[15] See Sarah Iles Johnston, Hekate Soteira (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990), pp. 39-48.

[16] See Phillip H. De Lacy and Benedict Einarson, trans., Plutarch’s Moralia (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1959) vol. VII, p. 467 note d; John Dillon, The Middle Platonists (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1977) p. 215.

[17] For a complete discussion of Hekate’s role as boundary between the cosmic and the hypercosmic, and of the relationship between the Chaldaean Hekate and the Platonic World-Soul, see Johnston, Hekate.

[18] Timaeus 34B, trans. Cornford, Cosmology, p. 58. Emphasis mine.

[19] See Johnston, Hekate, pp. 64, 119-120, 126-127, 160.

[20] See Jackson, “Meaning,” p. 20 and n. 13; J.R. Hinnells, “Reflections on The Lion-Headed Figure in Mithraism,” Monumentum H.S. Nyberg (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1975) vol. 1, pp. 356-7; Beck, Planetary Gods, pp. 54-7; David Ulansey, The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, revised paperback, 1991), p. 120. Interestingly, the Arles leontocephaline torso (CIMRM 879– see Fig. 4 above) makes it difficult to argue that the snake symbolizes the path of the sun, since the snake here moves backwards through the zodiac. However, notice that this backwards movement through the zodiac is the same direction as that of the precession of the equinoxes, the discovery of which, I have argued in Origins, was the catalyst for the creation of the Mithraic mysteries.

[21]VI:25, trans. Henry Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953) p. 340; see also VI:35 (Chadwick, p. 351). Cf. Lewy, Oracles, p. 354.

[22] Trans. G.R.S. Mead, Pistis Sophia (London: John M. Watkins, 1963) p. 265.

[23] CIMRM 693, 1975, 2034, 2038, 2202, 2244, 2272, 2310, 2338.

[24] CIMRM 1935, 1958, 1972, 2166, 2171, 2291.

[25] Manfred Clauss, The Roman Cult of Mithras (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 2000) p. 152; M.L. West, Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971) p. 45 and Plate III.

[26] For complete discussion see James S. Romm, The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992) pp. 12-26.

[27] Acts of Thomas 32; trans. in Edgar Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha (Lutterworth Press, 1965) p. 460.

[28] Ulansey, Origins.

RETURN TO THE COSMIC MYSTERIES OF MITHRAS

David Ulansey’s Mithras and the Hypercosmic Sun

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

MITHRAS AND THE HYPERCOSMIC SUN

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

David Ulansey

PLAN: REMOVE MUCH/ CONDENSE, ADD BOLD ON KEY PHRASES

In Studies in Mithraism, John R.Hinnells, ed. (Rome: “L’Erma” di Brettschneider, 1994) pp. 257-64.

One of the most perplexing aspects of the Mithraic mysteries consists in the fact that Mithraic iconography always portrays Mithras and the sun god as separate beings, while– in stark contradiction to this absolutely consistent iconographical distinction between Mithras and the sun– in Mithraic inscriptions Mithras is often identified with the sun by being called “sol invictus,” the “unconquered sun.” It thus appears that the Mithraists somehow believed in the existence of two suns: one represented by the figure of the sun god, and the other by Mithras himself as the “unconquered sun.” It is thus of great interest to note that the Mithraists were not alone in believing in the existence of two suns, for we find in Platonic circles the concept of the existence of two suns, one being the normal astronomical sun and the other a so-called “hypercosmic” sun located beyond the sphere of the fixed stars.

In my book The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries I have argued that the god Mithras originated as the personification of the force responsible for the newly discovered cosmic phenomenon of the precession of the equinoxes. Since from the geocentric perspective the precession appears to be a movement of the entire cosmic sphere, the force responsible for it most likely would have been understood as being “hypercosmic,” beyond or outside of the cosmos. It will be my argument here that Mithras, as a result of his being imagined as a hypercosmic entity, became identified with the Platonic “hypercosmic sun,” thus opening up the way for the puzzling existence of two “suns” in Mithraic ideology.

The most important source for our knowledge of the Platonic tradition of the existence of two suns is the Chaldaean Oracles, the collection of enigmatic sayings generated late in the second century C.E. by a father and son both named Julian. These oracular sayings were, as is well known, seized upon by Porphyry and later Neoplatonists as constituting a divine revelation. For our purposes, the most important element in the Chaldaean teachings is that of the existence of two suns. As Hans Lewy says,

The Chaldaeans distinguished between two fiery bodies: one possessed of a noetic nature and the visible sun. The former was said to conduct the latter. According to Proclus, the Chaldaeans call the “solar world” situated in the supramundane region “entire light.” In another passage, this philosopher states that the supramundane sun was known to them as “time of time….”[1]

As Lewy showed definitively in his study, the Chaldaean Oracles were the product of a Middle Platonic milieu, since they are permeated by concepts and images known from Platonizing thinkers ranging from Philo to Numenius. It is thus likely that the Chaldaean concept of a hypercosmic sun is at least partly derived from the famous solar allegories of Plato’s Republic, in which the sun is used as a symbol for the highest of Plato’s Ideal Forms, that of the Good. In Book VI of the Republic (508Aff.) Plato compares the sun to the Good, saying that as the sun is the source of all illumination and understanding in the visible world (the horatos topos), the Good is the supreme source of being and understanding in the world of the forms (the noetos topos or “intelligible world”). Plato then amplifies this image in his famous allegory of the cave at the beginning of Book VII of the Republic. In this famous passage, Plato symbolizes normal human life as life in a cave, and then describes the ascent of one of the cave-dwellers up out of the cave where he sees for the first time the dazzling light of the sun outside the cave.

Thus in Book VI of the Republic we see the image of the sun used as a metaphor for the Form of the Good–the source of all being which exists in the “intelligible world” beyond the ordinary “visible world” of human experience–and then in Book VII, in the allegory of the cave, this same image of the sun is used even more concretely to symbolize that which exists outside of the normal human world represented by the cave.

In addition, as has often been noted, there seems to have been a connection in Plato’s imagination between his allegory in Book VII of the Republic of the ascent of the cave dweller to the sunlit world outside the cave and his myth in the Phaedrus of the ascent of the soul to the realm outside of the cosmos where “True Being” dwells. The account in the Phaedrus reads:

For the souls that are called immortal, so soon as they are at the summit [of the heavens], come forth and stand upon the back of the world: and straightway the revolving heaven carries them round, and they look upon the regions without. Of that place beyond the heavens none of our earthly poets has yet sung, and none shall sing worthily. But this is the manner of it, for assuredly we must be bold to speak what is true, above all when our discourse is upon truth. It is there that true being dwells, without colour or shape, that cannot be touched; reason alone, the soul’s pilot, can behold it, and all true knowledge is knowledge thereof. [2]

As R. Hackforth says,

No earlier myth has told of a hyperouranios topos [place beyond the heavens], but this is not the first occasion on which true Being, the ousia ontos ousa, has been given a local habitation. In the passage of Rep. VI which introduces the famous comparison of the Form of the Good to the sun we have a noetos topos contrasted with a horatos (508C): but a spatial metaphor is hardly felt there…. A truer approximation to the hyperouranios topos occurs in the simile of the cave in Rep. VII, where we are plainly told that the prisoners’ ascent into the light of day symbolises ten eis ton noeton tes psyches anodon (517B); in fact, the noetos topos of the first simile has in the second developed into a real spatial symbol. [3]

Paul Friedländer agrees with Hackforth completely in seeing a connection in Plato’s mind between the ascent from the cave in the Republic and the ascent to the “hypercosmic place” in the Phaedrus:

The movement “upward”… had found its fullest expression in the allegory of the cave in the Republic. [Now in the Phaedrus]… the dimension of the “above” is stated according to the new cosmic co-ordinates. For the “intelligible place” (topos noetos) in the Republic (509D, 517B) now becomes “the place beyond the heavens” (topos hyperouranios)…[4]

What is, of course, important to see here is that there exists already in Plato the obvious raw material for the emergence of the idea of the “hypercosmic sun”: when the prisoners escape the cave in the Republic what they find outside it is the sun, but if Hackforth and Friedländer are correct the vision of what is outside the cave in the Republic is linked in Plato’s mind with the vision of what is outside the cosmos in the myth recounted in the Phaedrus. It would therefore be a natural and obvious step for a Platonist to imagine that what is outside the cosmic cave of the Republic–namely, the sun, the visible symbol of the highest of the Forms and of the source of all being–is also what is to be found outside the cosmos in the “hypercosmic place” described in the Phaedrus.

An intermediate stage in the development of the concept of the “hypercosmic sun” between Plato and the Chaldaean Oracles can be glimpsed in Philo’s writings, for example in the following passage from De Opificio Mundi:

The intelligible as far surpasses the visible in the brilliancy of its radiance, as sunlight assuredly surpasses darkness…. Now that invisible light perceptible only by mind…is a supercelestial constellation [hyperouranios aster], fount of the constellations obvious to sense. It would not be amiss to term it “all-brightness,” to signify that from which sun and moon as well as fixed stars and planets draw, in proportion to their several capactiy, the light befitting each of them…[5]

Here we see Philo referring to the existence in the intelligible sphere of a “hypercosmic star” (hyperouranios aster) which he links with the image of sunlight, and which he sees as the ultimate source of the light in the visible heavens.[6] Philo’s formulation here is, of course, strikingly similar to the Chaldaean concept of the hypercosmic sun, the description of which by Lewy we should recall here: “The Chaldaeans distinguished between two fiery bodies: one possessed of a noetic nature and the visible sun. The former was said to conduct the latter. According to Proclus, the Chaldaeans call the ‘solar world’ situated in the supramundane region ‘entire light.'”[7]

The trajectory we have been tracing from Plato through Middle Platonism to the Chaldaean Oracles continues beyond the time of the Chaldaean Oracles into early Neoplatonism, for we find the concept of the existence of two suns clearly spelled out in the writings of Plotinus, in a context that makes it clear that for Plotinus one of these suns was “hypercosmic.” In chapter 2, paragraph 11 of his fourth Ennead, Plotinus speaks of two suns, one being the normal visible sun and the other being an “intelligible sun.” According to Plotinus,

…that sun in the divine realm is Intellect– let this serve as an example for our discourse– and next after it is soul, dependent upon it and abiding while Intellect abides. This soul gives the edge of itself which borders on this [visible] sun to this sun, and makes a connection of it to the divine realm through the medium of itself, and acts as an interpreter of what comes from this sun to the intelligible sun and from the intelligible sun to this sun… [8]

What is especially interesting for us is that in the same third chapter of the fourth Ennead, a mere six paragraphs after the passage just quoted, Plotinus explicitly locates the intelligible realm– which he has just told us is the location of a second sun– in the space beyond the heavens. The passage reads:

One could deduce from considerations like the following that the souls when they leave the intelligible first enter the space of heaven. For if heaven is the better part of the region perceived by the senses, it borders on the last and lowest parts of the intelligible. [9]

As A.H. Armstong says of this passage, “There is here a certain ‘creeping spatiality’… [Plotinus’] language is influenced, perhaps not only by the ‘cosmic religiosity’ of his time, but by his favorite myth in Plato’s Phaedrus (246D6-247E6).”[10] In any event, we here find Plotinus in the third chapter of the fourth Ennead first positing the existence of an “intelligible sun” besides the normal visible sun, and then locating the intelligible realm spatially in the region beyond the outermost boundary of the heavens.

Finally, to return to the Chaldaean Oracles, the fact that the Chaldaean concept of the “hypercosmic sun” was at least sometimes taken in a completely literal and spatial sense is shown by a passage from the Platonizing Emperor Julian’s Hymn to Helios. According to Julian, in certain unnamed mysteries it is taught that “the sun travels in the starless heavens far above the region of the fixed stars.”[11] Given the fact that Julian’s thinking was steeped in the Neoplatonic philosophy of Iamblichus who was deeply committed to the Chaldaean Oracles as a source of divinely inspired knowledge, and given the fact that the doctrine of the “hypercosmic sun” is an established teaching of the Chaldaean Oracles, it is virtually certain, as Robert Turcan points out in his remarks about this passage, that Julian is referring here to the teaching of the Chaldaean Oracles.[12] The passage from Julian, therefore, shows that the “hypercosmic sun” of the Chaldaean Oracles was understood as being “hypercosmic” not in a merely symbolic or metaphysical sense, but rather in the literal sense of being located physically and spatially in the region beyond the outermost boundary of the cosmos defined by the sphere of the fixed stars.

Our discussion thus far has shown that in the late second century C.E. there is found in the Chaldaean Oracles the doctrine of the existence of two suns: one the normal, visible sun, and the other a “hypercosmic”sun. The evidence from Julian shows that the “hypercosmic” nature of this second sun was understood as meaning that it was literally located beyond the outermost sphere of the fixed stars. The fact that the Chaldaean Oracles emerged out of the milieu of Middle Platonism suggests that the doctrine of the “hypercosmic sun” found in the Oracles did not develop overnight, but that it has roots in the Platonic tradition, most likely, as we have seen, going back ultimately to Plato himself: specifically, to the allegory in the Republic of the ascent beyond the world-cave to the sunlit realm outside and the related myth of the Phaedrus describing the ascent of the soul towards its ultimate vision of the hyperouranios topos, the “hypercosmic place” beyond the heavens. An intermediate stage between Plato and the Chaldaean Oracles is found in Philo’s reference to the “hypercosmic star” which is the source of the light of the visible heavenly bodies, and slightly later than the Chaldaean Oracles we find Plotinus making reference to two suns, one of them being in the intelligible realm which he places spatially beyond the heavens.

We may say, therefore, that it is likely that there existed in Middle Platonic circles during the second century C.E. (and probably much earlier as well) speculations about the existence of a second sun besides the normal, visible sun: a “hypercosmic” sun located in that “place beyond the heavens” (hyperouranios topos) described in Plato’s Phaedrus.

We see here, of course, a striking parallel with the Mithraic evidence in which we also find two suns, one being Helios the sun-god (who is always distinguished from Mithras in the iconography) and the other being Mithras in his role as the “unconquered sun.” On the basis of my explanation of Mithras as the personification of the force responsible for the precession of the equinoxes this striking parallel becomes readily explicable. For as we have seen, the “hypercosmic sun” of the Platonists is located beyond the sphere of the fixed stars, in Plato’s hyperouranios topos. But if my theory about Mithras is correct (namely, that he was the personification of the force responsible for the precession of the equinoxes) it follows that Mithras–as an entity capable of moving the entire cosmic sphere and therefore of necessity being outside that sphere–must have been understood as a being whose proper location was in precisely that same “hypercosmic realm” where the Platonists imagined their “hypercosmic sun” to exist. A Platonizing Mithraist (of whom there must have been many– witness Numenius, Cronius, and Celsus), therefore, would almost automatically have been led to identify Mithras with the Platonic “hypercosmic sun,” in which case Mithras would become a second sun besides the normal, visible sun. Therefore, the puzzling presence in Mithraic ideology of two suns (one being Helios the sun-god and the other Mithras as the “unconquered sun”) becomes immediately understandable on the basis of my theory about the nature of Mithras.

Finally, the line of investigation which I have pursued here can also allow me to provide a simple and convincing interpretation for two further puzzling elements of Mithraic iconography. First, all the various astronomical explanations of the tauroctony which scholars are currently advancing (including my own) agree that the bull in the tauroctony is meant to represent the constellation Taurus. However, the constellation Taurus as seen in the night sky faces to the left while the bull in the tauroctony always faces to the right. How can this apparent discrepancy be explained? On the basis of my theory this question has an obvious answer. For although it is the case that the constellation Taurus as seen from the earth (i.e., from inside the cosmos) faces to the left, it is also the case that on ancient (and modern) star-globes which depict the cosmic sphere as it would be seen from the outside the orientation of the constellations is naturally reversed, with the result that on such globes (like the famous ancient “Atlas Farnese” globe) Taurus is always depicted facing to the right exactly like the bull in the tauroctony. This shows that the Mithraic bull is meant to represent the constellation Taurus as seen from outside the cosmos, i.e. from the “hypercosmic” perspective, which is, of course, precisely the perspective we should expect to find associated with Mithras if my argument in this paper is correct.[13]

Second, the line of investigation I have pursued here can also provide a simple and convincing interpretation of the iconographical motif known as the “rock-birth” of Mithras, in which Mithras is shown emerging out of a rock. As is well known, Porphyry, quoting Eubulus, explains in the Cave of the Nymphs that the Mithraic cave in which Mithras kills the bull and which the Mithraic temple imitates was meant to be an image of the cosmos (De Antro. 6). Of course, the hollow Mithraic cave would have to be an image of the cosmos as seen from the inside. But caves are precisely hollows within the rocky earth, which suggests the possibility that the rock out of which Mithras is born is meant to represent the cosmos as seen from the outside. Confirmation of this interpretation is provided by the fact that the rock out of which Mithras is born is often shown entwined by a snake, a detail which unmistakably evokes the famous Orphic motif of the snake-entwined cosmic egg out of which the cosmos was formed when the god Phanes emerged from it at the beginning of time.[14] It thus seems reasonable to conclude that the rock in the Mithraic scenes of the “rock-birth” of Mithras is a symbol for the cosmos as seen from the outside, just as the cave (the hollow within the rock) is a symbol for the cosmos as seen from the inside.

I would argue, therefore, that the “rock-birth” of Mithras is a symbolic representation of his “hypercosmic” nature. Capable of moving the entire universe, Mithras is essentially greater than the cosmos, and cannot be contained within the cosmic sphere. He is therefore pictured as bursting out of the rock that symbolizes the cosmos (not unlike the prisoner emerging from the cosmic cave described by Plato in Rep. VII), breaking through the boundary of the universe represented by the rock’s surface and establishing his presence in the “hypercosmic place” indicated by the space into which he emerges outside of the rock.

And, to conclude, in this context it is no accident that in the “rock-birth” scenes Mithras is almost always shown holding a torch; for having established that his proper place is outside of the cosmos, Mithras has become identified with the “hypercosmic sun”: that light-giving being which dwells, as Proclus says,

in the supermundane (worlds) [en tois hyperkosmiois]; for there exists the “solar world (and the) whole light…” as the Chaldaean Oracles say and which I believe.[15]

NOTES

[1] Hans Lewy, Chaldaean Oracles and Theurgy (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1978) pp. 151-2.

[2] 247B-C; trans. R. Hackforth, Plato’s Phaedrus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952) pp. 71,78.

[3] Ibid., pp. 80-1.

[4] Paul Friedländer, Plato I: An Introduction (New York: Pantheon Books, 1958) p. 194.

[5] VIII.31; trans. F.H. Colson, Philo (London: William Heinemann, 1929) vol. 1, p. 25.

[6] Philo often speaks of God using expressions such as the “intelligible sun” (noetos helios [Quaest. in Gen. IV.1; see Ralph Marcus, trans., Philo Supplement 1: Questions and Answers on Genesis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953) p. 269, n.l]) or similar expressions involving light and illumination located in the intelligible realm; for references see Pierre Boyancé, Études sur le songe de Scipion (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1936) pp. 73-4; Lewy, Chaldaean Oracles, p. 151, n. 312; David Runia, Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1986) p. 435 and n. 143. Boyancé (p. 73-4) quite reasonably argues that such expressions were identical in Philo’s mind with the hyperouranios aster (“hypercosmic star”) of De Opificio Mundi VIII.31.

[7] For a superb discussion of the broader context in which the development of the concept of the “hypercosmic sun” most likely occured, see Boyancé, Études, pp. 65-77. Recently A.P. Bos has argued that the story of the ascent to the sunlit world outside of the cave in Plato’s Republic was explicitly connected by Aristotle with Plato’s image in the Phaedrus of the ascent of the soul to the “place beyond the heavens,” and that this connection played a central role in one of Aristotle’s lost dialogues whose major elements were then preserved and utilized by Plutarch in his De Facie. See A.P. Bos, Cosmic and Meta-Cosmic Theology in Aristotle’s Lost Dialogues (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1989): the argument is complex and the book should be read as a whole, but see esp. pp. 67-8, 182. The development of the concept of the “hypercosmic sun” also must, of course, be seen in the context of the evolution of the “solar theology” described by Franz Cumont in his La théologie solaire du paganisme romain (Paris: Librairie Kliensieck, 1909). A very important and intriguing argument is made for the presence of a tradition of a “hypercosmic sun” in Orphic circles by Hans Leisegang, “The Mystery of the Serpent,” in Joseph Campbell, ed., The Mysteries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955) pp. 194-261. The Greek magical papyri and the Hermetic corpus provide numerous examples of solar imagery in which the sun is in various ways symbolically elevated to at least the summit of the cosmos if not explicitly to a “hypercosmic” level. Finally, Hermetic, Gnostic, and Neoplatonic texts all betray an almost obsessive concern with enumerating and distinguishing the various cosmic spheres and levels, and especially with establishing where the boundary lies between the cosmic and the hypercosmic realms (the hypercosmic realm being identified by the Hermetists and Neoplatonists with the “intelligible world” and by the Gnostics with the “Pleroma”). This concern with establishing the boundary between the cosmic and the hypercosmic must have fed into speculations about the “hypercosmic sun,” and–intriguingly–one of the clearest symbolic formulations of this boundary between the cosmic and the hypercosmic is found in the religious system of the Chaldaean Oracles (exactly, that is, in the system in which we find explicitly formulated the image of the “hypercosmic sun”), where the figure of Hecate is understood as the symbolic embodiment of precisely this boundary (on the image of Hecate in the Chaldaean Oracles see now Sarah Iles Johnston, Hekate Soteira [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990]).

[8] IV, 3.11.14-22; trans. A.H. Armstrong, Plotinus (Cambridge, Mass., 1984) vol. 4, pp. 71-73.

[9] IV.3.17.1-6; ibid, pp. 87-89.

[10] Ibid., p. 88, n. 1.

[11] Or. 4.148A; trans. W. C. Wright, Julian (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962) p. 405.

[12] Robert Turcan, Mithras Platonicus (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1975) p. 124. Julian was well acquainted with the Chaldaean Oracles: see Polymnia Athanassiadi-Fowden, Julian and Hellenism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981) pp. 143-53. Roger Beck has recently suggested that Julian is referring here to the Iranian cosmology in which the sun and moon are located beyond the stars (Planetary Gods and Planetary Orders in the Mysteries of Mithras [Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1988], pp. 2-3, n.2). However, Julian’s intimate association with Iamblichus and the Chaldaean Oracles, in which the doctrine of the “hypercosmic sun” is well established, renders the possibility that Julian is referring to the Iranian tradition highly unlikely. As Hans Lewy says, “There seems to be no connection between [Julian’s teaching] and Zoroaster’s doctrine according to which the sun is situated above the fixed stars” (Chaldaean Oracles, p. 153, n. 317). However, it is certainly true that the existence of the Iranian cosmology placing the sun beyond the stars could easily have provided some additional motivation for the emergence of the identification between the “Persian” Mithras and the Platonic “hypercosmic sun” for which I have argued here. On the Iranian cosmology see M.L. West, Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 89-91; Walter Burkert, “Iranisches bei Anaximandros,” Rheinisches Museum 106 (1963) pp. 97-134.

[13] It should be noted that the fact that the bull in the tauroctony faces to the right renders untenable Roger Beck’s suggestion that the tauroctony is a picture of the night sky as seen by an observer on earth at the time of the setting of the constellation Taurus (“Cautes and Cautopates: Some Astronomical Considerations,” Journal of Mithraic Studies 2.1 [1977] p. 10; Planetary Gods and Planetary Orders in the Mysteries of Mithras [Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1988] p. 20), since such an observer would see Taurus facing to the left. The fact that the bull in the tauroctony faces right is explicable only if we understand the tauroctony as the creation of someone who had in mind an astronomical star-globe showing the cosmic sphere as seen from the outside, and not– as Beck argues– an image of the sky as seen from the earth.

[14] That the rock from which Mithras is born was identified with the Orphic cosmic egg is in fact proven beyond doubt, as is well known, by the striking similarity between the Mithraic Housesteads monument (CIMRM 860), which shows Mithras being born out of an egg (which is thus identified with the rock from which he is usually born), and the famous Orphic Modena relief showing Phanes breaking out of the cosmic egg (CIMRM 695). In connection with this Orphic-Mithraic syncretism, Hans Leisegang, “Mystery of the Serpent” (above, n. 8), esp. pp. 201-215, has collected a fascinating body of material–including among other things the Modena relief and the passage from Julian which I have discussed above–supporting the contention that the breaking of the Orphic cosmic egg is linked directly with the concept of the “hypercosmic.” Leisegang’s discussion as a whole provides strong support for my general argument in this paper.

[15] Chaldaean Oracles Frag. 59 (= Proclus, In Tim. III.83.13-16); trans. Ruth Majercik, The Chaldaean Oracles (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1989) p. 73. The sun was often imagined in antiquity as a torchbearer, as for example in SVF 1:538: “Cleanthes… used to say… that the sun is a torchbearer” (cited in Jean Pépin, “Cosmic Piety,” in Classical Mediterranean Spirituality [New York: Crossroad, 1986] p. 425); a fragment from Porphyry: “In the mysteries of Eleusis, the hierophant is dressed as demiurge, the torchbearer as the sun…” (also cited in Pepin, “Piety,” p. 429); and of course Lucius in Apuleius’ Golden Ass XI.24: “In my right hand I carried a lighted torch… thus I was adorned like unto the sun….” (trans. W. Adlington, Apuleius The Golden Ass [London: William Heinemann, 1928] p. 583).

Back to The Cosmic Mysteries of Mithras

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David Ulansey’s Home Page

http://www.mysterium.com

See Also

Search this site for “Ulansey”:
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Michael Hoffman, Sunday, March 23, 2025

Contents:

• Motivation of this Page
• The Censored Panofsky Sentence About the Two Mushroom-Tree Art Instances That Panofsky Sent to Wasson
• Key Words
• Contrast Between the Instances’ Key Words
• Page 180 of SOMA: Proof of Insincerity & Duplicity: “Consult Art World” in Same Paragraph as Censors Brinckmann Citation and Description of Two Attached Mushroom-Trees
• Proof of Duplicity and Insincerity of Wasson
• “Wasson’s conclusion”, p. 56 of “Daturas for the Virgin”
• Gallery
• Every Instance of Miniature, 990, Mushroom-Like Shape
• Candidate 1 and Working Hypothesis: The First Mushroom-tree Panofsky Sent Wasson
• Every Instance of Glass Painting, Thirteenth Century, Emphatic Mushroom-Like Crown
• Candidate 2 and Working Hypothesis: The Second Mushroom-tree Panofsky Sent Wasson
• See Also

Motivation of this Page

The first step in identifying which two mushroom-tree art images Panofsky sent Wasson is to prepare a mission template to capture that information; this page.

I have already emailed Dr. Secret and the Evil M. Hoffman at Gordon . . . .🔍🧐🤔 Wasson headquarters asking if the Huggins secret drawer W3.2 at Wasson Archive contains the two mushroom-trees Panofsky sent Wasson.

Jan Irvin was prohibited from accessing the Huggins drawer (footnote citation in Ronald Huggins’ 2024 article “Foraging for Psychedelic Mushrooms in the Wrong Forest: The Great Canterbury Psalter as a Medieval Test Case”) , as Irvin throughly documented in The Holy Mushroom 2008. [check/give cit.]

Wasson Archives, Harvard University Herbarium, Cambridge, Mass. Tina and R. Gordon Wasson Ethnomycological Collection Archives, ecb00001, series IV, drawer W3.2, folder 20. Botany Libraries, Economic Botany Library of Oakes Ames, Harvard University.

Erwin Panofsky’s Letters to Gordon Wasson, Transcribed

No guarantee that Dr. Secret & the Evil M. Hoffman saw my email, and no guarantee I saw their reply [todo: check].

See copy of my email at this site (todo: link). Carl Amanita Promoter Ruck, Mark Hoffman.

The only question is which of these art works, from the two comprehensive galleries shown below, Panofsky sent to Gordon . . . .🔍🧐🤔 Wasson in 1952.

This page shows every art image fitting the descriptions:
https://egodeaththeory.org/2025/01/07/panofskys-letters-to-wasson-transcribed/#Sentence-1-7

The Censored Panofsky Sentence About the Two Mushroom-Tree Art Instances That Panofsky Sent to Wasson

Just to show what I mean, I enclose two specimens: a miniature of ca. 990 which shows the inception of the process, viz., the gradual hardening of the pine into a mushroom-like shape, and a glass painting of the thirteenth century, that is to say about a century later than your fresco, which shows an even more emphatic schematization of the mushroom-like crown.

Panofsky Letter 1 to Gordon . . . .🔍🧐🤔 Wasson May 2 1952, sentence 7, https://egodeaththeory.org/2025/01/07/panofskys-letters-to-wasson-transcribed/#Sentence-1-7

Key Words

• miniature
• 990
• mushroom-like shape

• glass painting
• thirteenth century
• emphatic mushroom-like crown

Contrast Between the Instances’ Key Words

• miniature vs. glass painting
• 1000 AD vs. 1250 AD
• mushroom-like shape vs. emphatic mushroom-like crown

Page 180 of SOMA: Proof of Insincerity & Duplicity: “Consult Art World” in Same Paragraph as Censors Brinckmann Citation and Description of Two Attached Mushroom-Trees

This proves insincerity and duplicity and thus proves academic fraud committed by Gordon . . . .🔍🧐🤔 Wasson:

In the same paragraph, Wasson wrote:

• Ellipses ( . . . . ) instead of “If you are interested, I recommend a little book by A. E. Brinckmann, Die Baumdarstellung im Mittelalter (or something like it), where the process is described in detail. Just to show what I mean, I enclose two specimens: a miniature of ca. 990 which shows the inception of the process, viz., the gradual hardening of the pine into a mushroom-like shape, and a glass painting of the thirteenth century, that is to say about a century later than your fresco, which shows an even more emphatic schematization of the mushroom-like crown.”
• “the mycologists have refrained from consulting the art world“

https://egodeaththeory.org/2025/01/07/panofskys-letters-to-wasson-transcribed/#Transcription-of-Letter-1

Proof of Duplicity and Insincerity of Wasson

If Wasson were sincere in telling mycologists (affirmers of mushroom imagery in Christian art) to consult the art world, Wasson would not have replaced Panofsky’s two sentences by ellipses, and Wasson would have published both letters from Panofsky and the two instances of mushroom-tree art.

This is proved, an exposed cover-up operation by Wasson to mislead the public and misrepresent Wasson’s conclusion, as leaked by Ruck (Wasson’s confidant) et al.

“Wasson’s conclusion”, p. 56 of “Daturas for the Virgin”

p. 56 of “Daturas for the Virgin”, Ruck et al, Entheos 2, 2001: “Wasson’s conclusion” Placed After Wasson’s Genesis Text Proposal and then “substantiated by many depictions of the Paradise Trees as mushrooms”

See The Holy Mushroom, Jan Irvin, 2008 p0. 100-105 criticizing this “Wasson’s conclusion” passage as the opposite of history re: Wasson’s publicly claimed position he tried to force on mycologists.

todo: transcribe section “Mushroom-apples”

Wasson privately believed mushroom imagery in Christian art, as leaked by p. 56 of “Daturas for the Virgin”, Ruck et al, Entheos 2, 2001, where Ruck writes “Wasson’s conclusion”, after giving Wasson’s Genesis tree of knowledge / Amanita connection followed by the argument – as supporting evidence – for hundreds of Paradise trees as mushrooms.

Ruck says, and necessarily implies, that Wasson concluded mushroom-trees mean mushrooms.

Wasson acted like he believed mushroom imagery in Christian art, when he wrote like “I am prepared to weather the coming storm”, where Wasson leaked and revealed his belief in mushroom imagery in Christian art, given that there cannot be a coming storm from his infinitely feeble, weak, indirect, extremely distant and vague association he asserted between Genesis text tree of knowledge, snake, and Amanita.

Wasson wrote “this story”, strictly meaning Genesis text tree of knowledge story, not all Paradise trees or all mushroom-trees.

To propose a novel reading of this celebrated story is a daring thing: it is exhilarating and intimidating. I am confident, ready for the storm.

Wasson, Persephone’s Quest, p. 74

For details and quotes, Find “storm” in Wasson and Allegro on the Tree of Knowledge as Amanita (Hoffman, 2006), http://egodeath.com/WassonEdenTree.htm.

Wasson believed mushroom imagery in Christian art; mushroom-trees mean mushrooms, and that fits his statement about the coming storm from his belief: not Wasson’s publicly lied-about, negative belief, but Wasson’s actual, privately held, positive belief, reflected in his words “coming storm” and Ruck’s words “Wasson’s conclusion”.

Gallery

Every Instance of Miniature, 990, Mushroom-Like Shape

Candidate 1 and Working Hypothesis: The First Mushroom-tree Panofsky Sent Wasson

What’s a better candidate?

Every Instance of Glass Painting, Thirteenth Century, Emphatic Mushroom-Like Crown

Candidate 2 and Working Hypothesis: The Second Mushroom-tree Panofsky Sent Wasson

What’s a better candidate?

https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_8AgwAAAAYAAJ/page/n77/mode/2up

See Also

Tree Stylizations in Medieval Paintings (Brinckmann 1906)

Site Map: Erwin Panofsky
https://egodeaththeory.org/nav/#Panofsky

• Erwin Panofsky’s Letters to Gordon Wasson, Transcribed – 2025/01/06
  • Panofsky’s Censored Pair of Letters to Wasson Revealed and Transcribed – 2023/

Michael Hoffman, 9 am, Sunday, March 23, 2025

Contents:

• The Science of Free Will: Bridging Theory and Positive Psychology (Baumeister, Sep. 2024)
• Video: Roy Baumeister: Free Will, The Self, Ego, Will Power (April 2024)
• Books by Roy Baumeister
• The Self Explained: Why and How We Become Who We Are (Baumeister, 2022)
• David Litwa Books
  • Hermetica I: The Corpus Hermeticum, Asclepius, and Nag Hammadi Hermetica Ordered as a Path of Initiation (Litwa, 2025)
  • Hermetica II: The Excerpts of Stobaeus, Papyrus Fragments, and Ancient Testimonies in an English Translation with Notes and Introduction (Litwa, 2018)
• Psychedelics and the Soul: A Mythic Guide to Psychedelic Healing, Depth Psychology, and Cultural Repair (Yugler, 2024)
• How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival (Kaiser, 2011)
• Groovy Science: Knowledge, Innovation, and American Counterculture (Kaiser & McCray, 2016)
• Motivation for this Page
• See Also

The Science of Free Will: Bridging Theory and Positive Psychology (Baumeister, Sep. 2024)

The Science of Free Will: Bridging Theory and Positive Psychology
Roy F. Baumeister, Sep. 20, 2024 (Social Psychology)
Cornerstones in Positive Psychology
https://www.amazon.com/Science-Free-Will-Psychology-Cornerstones/dp/0197693520/ —

“This groundbreaking book sheds new scientific light on the age-old question of free will.

“Humankind evolved to flourish by creating a new kind of society, which required an advanced mind capable of recognizing possibilities and making good choices.

“No other animal operates amid economic marketplaces, shared moral principles, legal systems, religious and political institutions, and the like.

“Rather than getting bogged down in philosophical debates, The Science of Free Will surges ahead to explain how this marvelous, newly evolved mental system works.

“Some actions are freer than others, so how does one recognize and take advantage of this freedom?

Key features involve grounding actions in time and pondering multiple possible futures—

indeed understanding one’s life as a story, in which one’s actions link past, present, and future-and conscious thoughts, including

• logical reasoning,
• planning, and
• overriding one’s first impulse.

“Understanding free will in this fashion reveals both the powers and the limits of the human mind.”

Video: Roy Baumeister: Free Will, The Self, Ego, Will Power (April 2024)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXoK-C2c2AQ —

Video title:
Roy Baumeister: Free Will, The Self, Ego, Will Power
YouTube channel: Curt Jaimungal
Apr. 5, 2024

“Roy Baumeister joins Theories of Everything to discuss

• the complexities of free will,
• the interplay between self-control and societal behaviors, and
• the psychological impacts of rejection and belongingness.”

Books by Roy Baumeister

https://www.amazon.com/stores/Roy-F.-Baumeister/author/B001H6IAJY/allbooks?ref=ap_rdr – sort by publication date

The Self Explained: Why and How We Become Who We Are (Baumeister, 2022)

The Self Explained: Why and How We Become Who We Are
Roy F. Baumeister, April 12, 2022
https://www.amazon.com/Self-Explained-Why-How-Become/dp/1462549284/

“The idea of the self is immediately familiar to everyone, yet elusive to define and understand.

“From pioneering researcher Roy F. Baumeister, this volume synthesizes a vast body of knowledge to provide a panoramic view of the human self—

• how it develops and functions,
• why it exists, and
• what problems it encounters on the journey through life. [the intense loose cognition state]

“What are the benefits of self-knowledge, and how attainable is it?

“Do we have one self, or many?

“What is the relationship of self and society?

“In 28 concise chapters, Baumeister explains complex concepts with clarity and insight.

“He reveals the central role played by the self in enabling both individuals and cultures to thrive.”

David Litwa Books

https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00J5VOVCS/allbooks – David Litwa books

Hermetica I: The Corpus Hermeticum, Asclepius, and Nag Hammadi Hermetica Ordered as a Path of Initiation (Litwa, 2025)

I have read this book.

Hermetica I: The Corpus Hermeticum, Asclepius, and Nag Hammadi Hermetica Ordered as a Path of Initiation
M. David Litwa, paperback, January 2, 2025
https://www.amazon.com/Hermetica-Hermeticum-Asclepius-Hammadi-Initiation/dp/B0DS2CZKC3/ —

Blurb:

“The Hermetic corpus is a spiritual and intellectual treasure stemming from ancient Egyptian sages who could write and think in Greek.

“Since the Renaissance, this corpus has appeared in an order that does not fit the path of spiritual initiation suggested by the corpus itself.

“The present edition reorders the corpus—including the Latin Asclepius and the Nag Hammadi Hermetica—into four progressing parts: introductory tractates, general discourses, detailed discourses, and revelatory discourses.

“A short spiritual commentary follows each tractate.

“The book is written for all lovers of the Hermetica, but in particular for those who are willing, in some sense, to join the way of immortality.”

Hermetica I: The Corpus Hermeticum, Asclepius, and Nag Hammadi Hermetica Ordered as a Path of Initiation
M. David Litwa, Hardcover: January 24, 2025
https://www.amazon.com/Hermetica-Hermeticum-Asclepius-Hammadi-Initiation/dp/B0DV3SG9YZ/

Hermetica II: The Excerpts of Stobaeus, Papyrus Fragments, and Ancient Testimonies in an English Translation with Notes and Introduction (Litwa, 2018)

June 21, 2018
https://www.amazon.com/Hermetica-Fragments-Testimonies-Translation-Introduction/dp/1107182530/

Blurb:

“Hermetica II: The Excerpts of Stobaeus, Papyrus Fragments, and Ancient Testimonies in an English Translation with Notes and Introduction
M. David Litwa

Blurb:

“This volume presents in new English translations the scattered fragments and testimonies regarding Hermes Thrice Great that complete Brian Copenhaver’s translation of the Hermetica (Cambridge, 1992).

“It contains the twenty-nine fragments from Stobaeus (including the famous Kore Kosmou), the Oxford and Vienna fragments (never before translated), an expanded selection of fragments from various authors (including Zosimus of Panopolis, Augustine, and Albert the Great), and testimonies about Hermes from thirty-eight authors (including Cicero, Pseudo-Manetho, the Emperor Julian, Al-Kindī, Michael Psellus, the Emerald Tablet, and Nicholas of Cusa).

All translations are accompanied by introductions and notes which cite sources for further reading.

These Hermetic texts will appeal to a broad array of readers interested in western esotericism including scholars of Egyptology, the New Testament, the classical world, Byzantium, medieval Islam, the Latin Middle Ages, and the Renaissance.”

New: keyboard shortcuts, short/med/long, that contain a book citation or webpage link

in this context of planning keyboard shortcuts, space char = not defined yet.

Only define this full set if needed.
Mar 23, 2025: new formalized set of keyboard shortcuts pattern.
The long expansion includes link either to book or to my page.

author last name
y g
author first & last name
s y

short yugler book:
p a t s
med yugler book:
p a t s m
long yugler book:
p a t s l

Psychedelics and the Soul: A Mythic Guide to Psychedelic Healing, Depth Psychology, and Cultural Repair (Yugler, 2024)

I have read this book, in church book club, and we met with the author.

Psychedelics and the Soul: A Mythic Guide to Psychedelic Healing, Depth Psychology, and Cultural Repair
Simon Yugler, October 1, 2024
https://www.amazon.com/Psychedelics-Soul-Psychedelic-Psychology-Cultural/dp/B0CR9VRB64/

by Simon Yugler (Author)

5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars    30 ratings 

Blurb:

“A mythological journey through 10 archetypes of psychedelic healing: ancient stories, tangible tools, and depth psychology insights

“Designed for a new generation of psychedelic facilitators and seekers, Psychedelics and the Soulinvokes the traditions of

• Jungian depth psychology,
• mythology, and
• Indigenous cultural wisdom x

to meet a critical question of our times: How can the emerging field of psychedelic medicine heal the soul amid planetary crisis and collective opportunity?

“Psychedelic therapist Simon Yugler invites the reader on a mythological journey, using depth psychology to explore 10 universal themes that transcend our individual experiences—and reveal how psychedelic medicine can heal the soul and our collective unconscious in a time of uncertainty and initiation:

• The Well: The Unconscious, Symbolism, & the Mythic Unknown
• The Temple: Beyond Set & Setting
• The Underworld: Shadow, Grief, & the Descent to Soul
• The Serpent: Psychedelic Somatics & Shedding Your Skin
• The Monstrous: Trauma, Exiles, & the Wound That Heals

• The Trickster: Marginality, the Crossroads, & the Liminal Road
• The Guide: Power, Authenticity, & Inner Authority
• The Sacred Mountain: Vision, Ecstasy, & Becoming Nobody
• The Tree of Life: Animism, Climate Change, & the Ensouled Earth
• The Journey Home: Integration, Community, & Dancing with the Village

“Each archetype acts as a prism, using myth, fable, and universal wisdom to reflect back to the reader the collective experiences and unconscious truths that shape our psyches—and that are made more profound and accessible through psychedelics.

“Yugler shares how entheogens and plant medicine open a gateway to our understanding of our culture, selves, and interconnected reality toward wide-scale social and planetary healing.”

Read less <– NO! do not

Asked Simon Yugler in Person About His Approach vs. Houot’s Approach

I was just in a meeting with author Simon Yugler https://www.amazon.com/Psychedelics-Soul-Psychedelic-Psychology-Cultural/dp/ – four days ago on Thu. Dec. 19, 2024:

I asked Yugler if there’s anything left of the book and approach after removing therapy and healing; I mentioned vs Houot’s advocacy of a Psychonaut {science explorer/ discoverer} approach instead, in Houot’s forthcoming book.

Yugler as Example of How Modern Writing on Myth Destroys Myth

Search this site for Simon Yugler book:
https://egodeaththeory.org/?s=%22Simon+Yugler%22
found discussion at:
https://egodeaththeory.org/2025/01/29/idea-development-24/#Modern-Corruption-of-Myth-and-Art
https://egodeaththeory.org/2025/03/13/idea-development-page-26/#Modern-Era-So-Called-Myth

How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival (Kaiser, 2011)

https://www.amazon.com/How-Hippies-Saved-Physics-Counterculture/dp/039334231X/

by David Kaiser

“How the Hippies Saved Physics gives us an unconventional view of some unconventional people engaged early in the fundamentals of quantum theory. Great fun to read.” ―Anton Zeilinger, Nobel laureate in physics

The surprising story of eccentric young scientists―among them Nobel laureates John Clauser and Alain Aspect―who stood up to convention and changed the face of modern physics.

Today, quantum information theory is among the most exciting scientific frontiers, attracting billions of dollars in funding and thousands of talented researchers. But as MIT physicist and historian David Kaiser reveals, this cutting-edge field has a surprisingly psychedelic past. How the Hippies Saved Physics introduces us to a band of freewheeling physicists who defied the imperative to “shut up and calculate” and helped to rejuvenate modern physics.

For physicists, the 1970s were a time of stagnation. Jobs became scarce, and conformity was encouraged, sometimes stifling exploration of the mysteries of the physical world. Dissatisfied, underemployed, and eternally curious, an eccentric group of physicists in Berkeley, California, banded together to throw off the constraints of the physics mainstream and explore the wilder side of science. Dubbing themselves the “Fundamental Fysiks Group,” they pursued an audacious, speculative approach to physics. They studied quantum entanglement and Bell’s Theorem through the lens of Eastern mysticism and psychic mind-reading, discussing the latest research while lounging in hot tubs. Some even dabbled with LSD to enhance their creativity. Unlikely as it may seem, these iconoclasts spun modern physics in a new direction, forcing mainstream physicists to pay attention to the strange but exciting underpinnings of quantum theory.

A lively, entertaining story that illuminates the relationship between creativity and scientific progress, How the Hippies Saved Physics takes us to a time when only the unlikeliest heroes could break the science world out of its rut.”

46 illustrations

Groovy Science: Knowledge, Innovation, and American Counterculture (Kaiser & McCray, 2016)

https://www.amazon.com/Groovy-Science-Knowledge-Innovation-Counterculture/dp/022637288X/

by David Kaiser (Editor), W. Patrick McCray (Editor)

Blurb:

“In his 1969 book The Making of a Counterculture, Theodore Roszak described the youth of the late 1960s as fleeing science “as if from a place inhabited by plague,” and even seeking “subversion of the scientific worldview” itself. Roszak’s view has come to be our own: when we think of the youth movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, we think of a movement that was explicitly anti-scientific in its embrace of alternative spiritualities and communal living.
           
Such a view is far too simple, ignoring the diverse ways in which the era’s countercultures expressed enthusiasm for and involved themselves in science—of a certain type. Rejecting hulking, militarized technical projects like Cold War missiles and mainframes, Boomers and hippies sought a science that was both small-scale and big-picture, as exemplified by the annual workshops on quantum physics at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, or Timothy Leary’s championing of space exploration as the ultimate “high.” Groovy Science explores the experimentation and eclecticism that marked countercultural science and technology during one of the most colorful periods of American history.”

Motivation for this Page

New: Attention to the combined use of printed book, ebook, and [new] audiobook.

result of new type of keyboard shortcut: [ROTPL]
type: long citation with link:

Happy w/ voice recording UI format, read aloud by Houot, for book:

Rise of the Psychonaut: Maps for Amateurs, Nonscientists and Explorers in the Psychedelic Age of Discovery, A. M. Houot (“Ooh-Oh”), Feb. 3, 2025, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DPSJGMFR (paperback, ebook, & audiobook)

I often need to paste book info at this site without creating a dedicate page (yet), and need to find , often, where I put that basic info about a book.

If a book’s info here is highly relevant and I have expanded it here, & in other pages, then, I can create a dedicated page for that author and/or that book or article.

Should I create a page about Yugler book? Or a section in some special page that could cover briefly a bunch of books??

eg: “Books” See first, site map:
https://egodeaththeory.org/nav/#books-articles-videos
I often have a need to dump basic info about a book into a page or into this site, just to examine. Yes, there is a real need for general Books page.

Then, if that is a good book that’s relevant to expand, after that, break out a page dedicated to that book – or, that author, probably even better.

Per-author page, eg I need or have a per-author page for … or I have a need for an author-deicated page for authors listed in Site map w/ their own section. For a given author, if highly relevant for the Egodeath theory, I need both:

• A Site Map section for my pages about that author’s works.
• A page for that author’s works. done for Jerry Brown, for example; I have a page, “Brown’s works”.
• todo: in Site Map here, include all (?) links/pages that are listed in home page Egodeath.com (2007). present site is EgodeathTheory.WordPress.com [EWC] (incle https? need keyboard shortcut that includes clickable url)

See Also

Site map: Books, articles, videos:
https://egodeaththeory.org/nav/#books-articles-videos

Site Map: various entheogen authors:
https://egodeaththeory.org/nav/#Various-Entheogen-Scholars

Prof. Jerry Brown’s Works (The Psychedelic Gospels)

Books Buying List
https://egodeaththeory.org/2022/04/15/books-buying-list/