Intoxicants & Altered States of Consciousness
Control is important where an ASC is entered from another ASC. Path-working, visualization and scrying is often more intense, more meaningful, if done in circle. This is because when you start to do the path-working or whatever from a mild ASC instead of your own normal waking state, you tend to go further or deeper, and thus gain more from the exercise. [1]
However, using drugs to enter an ASC before performing ritual is a completely different matter. Drugs leave you with no control over the first ASC you enter, so the outcome of entering a second one can be quite different from what you expected. The harder the drug, the bigger the problem is likely to be. A drug might, on a rare occasion, have a place in ritual, but only when the effect of the drug on the person taking it is known, there is a very good reason for its use, and someone else is available to deal with any problems that might arise. Drugs also sap the magical will and discipline by preventing you from learning how to achieve the results you desire by yourself, and encouraging you to be lazy. In the end your ritual work suffers. [1]
European witches still found ways to get high. During this period, they would rub entheogens such as belladonna, henbane, datura, and mandrake on their bodies (some theorize they rubbed these substances on the broomsticks and inserted them vaginally) in order to loosen their spirits from their physical form. In the resulting hallucinations, witches were said to fly to The Sabbath, the supposed time each month when witches, demons, and even the devil himself would come together to share magical secrets, sign evil pacts, and have wild, orgiastic parties. [4]
Psychedelics
Timothy Leary and friends did some research on psychedelics. While some of their work focused on how psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) might be used to rehabilitate prisoners, what Leary and his cohorts were really interested in was the spiritual or mystical states that psychedelics could induce, and the insights about the nature of self, consciousness, and the universe that these “higher states” of consciousness were thought to provide. Nixon once described Leary as “the most dangerous man in America.” It was a view many people at the time shared. Leary ended up being fired from his position at Harvard, he became a fugitive on the run from the law, and was eventually arrested and imprisoned for several years. [3]
To stay mentally well, it seems, we may have to disconnect from reality once in a while. “But if you want to relearn,” says Friston, “if you want to explore new hypotheses about the world, you need to do this because these are the very same physiological, synaptic mechanisms necessary for neural plasticity and restructuring.” [2]
The sharpest tools in this box are turning out to be psychedelics such as LSD and psilocybin, the active constituent of magic mushrooms. In a pilot study by Imperial College London and the Beckley Foundation, for example, after just two doses of psilocybin combined with psychotherapy, 67 per cent of patients with treatment-resistant depression were in remission a week later and 42 per cent were still free of symptoms after three months. Larger, randomised controlled trials are under way. [2]
Psychedelics appear to work by disrupting the inflexible models that govern our thoughts and behaviour, bringing alternatives to the fore. They do this by binding to a type of serotonin receptor found in abundance in a network of prefrontal regions known as the default mode network, high in the brain’s information-processing hierarchy. [2]
Highly stressful events such as starvation or cardiac arrest, by triggering the release of a flood of serotonin, may trip the very same switch in the brain. This may explain the psychedelic-like visual effects, euphoria and mystical revelations characteristic of near death experiences. Remarkably, in common with the long-term effects of high doses of psychedelic observed in several studies, people who have survived a near death experience often report long-lasting improvements in psychological wellbeing and less fear of dying. [7]
Alcohol
Alcohol can be an effective ritual tool when used properly, but it’s also not a necessary one. Alcohol should only be used responsibly, and no one should ever feel coerced into drinking it. It’s a connection to the past. Our ancestors most likely used alcohol in their own rituals (and we know lots of groups that did without question). Some of this was simply because alcohol was far safer to drink than water, but there were other reasons too. Alcohol was a large part of many cultures, and wasn’t a taboo on the margins of society. Alcohol often makes people feel happy, and happiness in ritual is generally a good thing. I think ritual in a lot of ways feeds on our emotions, and when our feelings are strong our rites are more powerful. [4]
Marijuana / Cannabis
Marijuana is still illegal, even for medical use, in many states and countries. This makes it nearly impossible for occult book publishers to let authors recommend using weed as a method to achieve trance states and soul flight, even if that is their preferred method. [4]
Cannabis can be tricky to work with spiritually. For many, even most of us, there’s a learning curve in finding out how to most skillfully benefit from the cannabis plant as a spiritual ally. A number of factors can influence the short- and long-term spiritual effects of cannabis—dosage, strain, frequency of use, attitude toward the plant, one’s state of mind and body at the time of the encounter, the specific setting, and, maybe most important, the ability to quiet the discursive mind and allow periods of inner stillness, as in marijuana meditation. [6]
Dr. DCA Hillman, a bacteriologist and classicist who has written about drug use in the ancient world, argues that there is evidence cannabis was traditionally burned to induce the Oracle of Delphi’s trance state since marijuana was already introduced to Greece from central Asian tribes who knew of the herb's potent psychotropic powers. The Oracle of Delphi was far from the only ancient magic practitioner to utilize marijuana in her craft: As noted in Uses and Abuses of Plant-Derived Smoke, "Members of the Gaddi tribe of India's Himachal Pradesh State in the western Himalayas, for example, smoked the resin of female [cannabis] plants, called sulpha, for the hallucinations it induced." Shamans and nobles from China to Russia have also been found buried with marijuana plants, denoting its sacred role. [5]
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