Psychedelic churches, religious organizations that treat substances like ayahuasca or psilocybin as sacred tools for ritual practice, are rapidly proliferating across the United States, operating with varying degrees of legal protection. Eric Steinhart, author of Atheistic Platonism: A Manifesto, argues that their survival depends on philosophy. Drawing on ancient Platonism, modern jurisprudence and the emerging ethics of psychedelic practice, this article explores why these new psychedelic churches need philosophy as much as they need their sacraments.

New psychedelic churches are appearing all over the United States. The term “church” is a legal convention – it doesn’t imply Christianity. It’s estimated that there are at least five hundred of these new psychedelic churches. They emerged through recent religious freedom laws and Supreme Court rulings. Four of them have explicit legal permission to use psychedelics in their rituals: the União de Vegetal churches, the Santo Daime churches, the Church of Gaia, and the Church of the Eagle and the Condor. The others exist in a legal gray area, probably protected by the laws that permit the legal four.

Philosophy has a crucial role to play in all these new psychedelic churches. Psychedelic churches, especially those operating in the legal gray area, need philosophy to demonstrate their religious sincerity. Psychedelic churches need philosophy to help them to develop meaningful rituals, and to articulate their codes of ethics. Psychedelic experiences can be extremely intense, and psychedelic churches need philosophy to help prepare people for that intensity.  Psychedelics can reveal powerful truths and important insights, but they can also produce delusions and nonsensical distractions. Philosophy can help sort the gems from the junk. People need to integrate their psychedelic experiences with their ordinary lives, and philosophy plays an essential role in that integration.

When it comes to philosophies that work well with psychedelics, there are probably many options. Perhaps the metaphysical visions of Spinoza or Whitehead can be useful for psychedelic churches. But one ancient philosophical tradition looks purpose-built for psychedelic churches. Ancient Platonists sound a lot like they’re talking about psychedelics. Many contemporary advocates of psychedelic religions, like Benny Shanon, William Richards, have pointed to the links between Platonism and psychedelic religiosity. And I’ve argued that late Roman Platonism (sometimes called “Neoplatonism”) provides an excellent Western philosophical resource for developing psychedelic churches. The most relevant philosophers here are Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Proclus. Of course, this ancient Platonism needs to be modernized. But Platonism has played a central role in the evolution of Western culture from ancient Rome to modern America. It’s not hard to modernize it. Platonists argued that ultimate reality has a deeply mathematical structure, and modern science basically works within that Platonic vision of ultimate reality. A suitably modernized Platonism is coherent with science.