Psychedelic Press Blog — ritual
A Variety of Religious Paths in Psychedelic Literature
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This article is by Robert Dickins, author of Erin, and editor of the Psychedelic Press UK Journal. INTRODUCTION: THE RELIGIOUS QUESTION In the mid-to-late 1950s, after the publication of Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception (1954) and Heaven and Hell (1956), a debate ensued as to whether hallucinogens, soon to be coined ‘psychedelics’ by Dr. Humphrey Osmond in a letter to Huxley, could be used in order to facilitate a religious/mystical experience. Although Huxley did not go so far as to equate the visionary experience of mescaline with the mystical in those texts, as described in various works of scripture,...