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.

The key text for anybody interested in Platonism and psychedelics is Iamblichus’s On the Mysteries. There you’ll find every aspect of psychedelic experience expertly mapped. On the Mysteries philosophically defends a system of religious practices known as theurgy. Theurgy has been described as a kind of shamanism and Western (Hellenic) Tantra. Through theurgical practices, humans could open their bodies to divine powers, and learn to see the world and their lives from a divine perspective. For the theurgist, the deities are not supernatural people living in heaven – they are natural causal powers at work right here on earth. And here’s an essential point: theurgists explicitly consumed plant substances as part of their rituals. We don’t know much about those substances, but theurgists like Iamblichus explicitly connect them to well-known features of psychedelic experience. The use of theurgy to rationally justify the rituals in psychedelic churches has been explored by Morgan Luck, Andre van der Braak, Evan Haines, and myself.  For example, van der Braak argues that Santo Daime rituals are theurgical.

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To see how Platonism can help new psychedelic churches, let’s start with their interactions with the law. Handling those interactions well is a very serious matter for those churches operating in the legal gray area. Sometimes their sacraments (usually ayahuasca or psilocybin) get seized by the police. And sometimes these gray churches seek explicit legal approval. When these churches touch the law, they need to convince the legal authorities that they are really using psychedelics for religious purposes. They’re not using them for recreational or medical purposes. They’re sincere, and not just pretending to be religious. One way to do this involves showing that they satisfy a list of criteria for religiosity. The most widely used list is the Meyers factors. By satisfying all the demands in the Meyers factors, Platonism can help these churches demonstrate sincerity.

Religions are usually social, involving many people bound together by shared beliefs, symbols, and behaviors. The Meyers factors say religions need to involve practical social features which distinguish their activities from merely secular events. Religious uses of psychedelics need to be marked off with boundaries that make them sacred. Psychedelic churches need to define those boundaries – typically by marking out sacred days, sacred places, and sacred rituals that occur on those days in those places. They need to map out ways to cross from the profane world into the ritual container (preparation), the process of the ritual itself, and ways to cross back into the profane world (integration). Crossing into ritual containers can’t be easy – it has to be challenging enough that only those who are sincerely committed to the beliefs and ideals of the religion are willing to do it. Theurgy is a system of rituals – it isn’t just abstract theorizing. The theurgists were ritual experts, and their ways of building rituals can be applied to psychedelics.

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Religions have always tried to integrate their ecstatic experiences with the rational demands of ordinary life. Platonism can help with this integration.

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Another paradigmatic feature of religions involves ethics. The Meyers factors tell you that, if your “religion” doesn’t have an ethical code, and doesn’t apply it both within and beyond its rituals, then it isn’t a religion. There are medical and psychiatric reasons why some people shouldn’t take psychedelics. Here psychedelic churches need to do some gate-keeping: potential participants need to be medically and psychiatrically screened. Psychedelic churches need leaders trained in the benefits and dangers of psychedelics. People in psychedelic states are vulnerable to exploitation – people have been harmed, often sexually, during psychedelic ceremonies. Psychedelic leaders need to honor ethical codes. And all participants in a psychedelic church need to honor ethical codes outside the ceremony. Platonists focus on cultivating our virtues, and on satisfying our obligations to each other – doing our moral duties. As the Meyers factors note, religions are traditionally concerned with helping people to develop their virtues and to do their duties. Platonism can show how psychedelics help us with these ethical aspects of our lives.

And psychedelic churches face some unique ethical issues. Chris Letheby argues that psychedelics reveal few truths – they mostly provide only comforting delusions. But it’s not ethical to cause people to have delusional beliefs. When people take psychedelics, they’re especially vulnerable to persuasion. They can (and have) been persuaded to accept harmful beliefs and to do harmful things. So psychedelic churches need safeguards against harmful delusions. Religions traditionally provide those safeguards by outlining a system of metaphysical doctrines – and the Meyers factors require religions to have such doctrines. Psychedelic churches need beliefs that are systematic enough, and rational enough, to protect people against harmful delusions. Platonism has an extremely well-developed metaphysical belief-system – it’s been refined over many centuries. Yet Platonism is not dogmatic – the ancient Platonists disagreed with each other, and developed different interpretations of the core Platonic ideas. Platonism is flexible.

Psychedelic churches are ethically obligated to prepare people for their psychedelic experiences. Religion doesn’t exempt you from informed consent. Psychedelics can be transformational in unpredictable ways. If you give somebody a psychedelic in your ceremony, you’re obligated to care for them during that ceremony. But religions are communities of enduring support. Psychedelic churches are obligated to provide care after the ceremonies are done. So psychedelic churches are ethically obligated to help their participants integrate their journeys with their ordinary lives. What do these journeys mean?Philosophy plays a key role here too: it provides logically disciplined techniques for making rational sense out of psychedelic experiences. Rational sense is important, because ordinary life demands rational thinking and acting. Religions have always tried to integrate their ecstatic experiences with the rational demands of ordinary life. Platonism can help with this integration. Platonists have built rational maps of ecstatic experiences, maps which can connect psychedelics with ordinary reality.

Established religions have long known about ecstatic visions. And they have also long known that most ecstatic visions are just nonsensical dreams with no religious significance. They have developed ways to distinguish visionary nonsense from visionary meaning. And they have long known that meaningless psychotic breaks from reality are easily confused with genuine religious experiences. On the basis of long experience, established religions have often made a damning accusation against psychedelic “religions”: Psychedelics don’t reveal any religious truths or deep insights into ultimate reality; on the contrary, they just make you psychotic. Or, even if they don’t make you psychotic, psychedelic experiences are merely subjective hallucinations. You might think you’re talking with Mother Ayahuasca, but in fact she doesn’t exist. She’s a figment of your drugged-up imagination, and talking with an illusion isn’t religiously meaningful.

To respond to this damning accusation, psychedelic churches need philosophy. They need philosophers to develop criteria for distinguishing genuine religious insights from ecstatic nonsense. They need philosophers to connect psychedelic experiences with coherent and stable religious beliefs. And to guard against harmful delusions. They need philosophers to make sober arguments that psychedelic experiences truthfully correspond to objectively existing things. They need rational arguments for the mind-independent existence of agents like Mother Ayahuasca. Ancient theurgists, like Iamblichus, have already addressed all these needs. Of course, it’s going to take some hard work to translate his reasoning to modern psychedelic rituals. Relative to the Meyers factors, doing that hard work shows that you’re serious about using psychedelics for religious purposes. It demonstrates religious sincerity. On the practical side, new psychedelic churches need philosophers to map out the paths from their rituals to enduring positive changes in people’s lives.

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Platonism provides a rational foundation for psychedelic rituals. This rationality helps defend psychedelic churches against the damning accusation that they are merely psychotic.

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Psychedelic experiences can be deeply disturbing. They can induce “ontological shock”, that is, they can cause people to have disturbing insights which profoundly conflict with their ordinary worldviews. These conflicts can plunge people into psychiatric crises that can go on for months and that require hospitalization. Philosophy can help to integrate these disturbing insights into a worldview that is coherent, rational, and compatible with ordinary life. Such philosophical work is especially important when people have bad trips. Jules Evans and others have been arguing that bad trips are common and dangerous. While most are mild, others can lead to real psychiatric harm. During bad trips, people are brought face to face with evil, horror, nothingness. Philosophers have traditionally been deeply interested in developing positive responses to existential negativities. Philosophers have long argued that we don’t need to fear the horrific side of life. We can respond to horrors with virtues. We can practice amor fati. Theurgists were deeply experienced with the dangerous darkness of mysticism. Platonists were among the first thinkers to map out the abyss, and their maps can help psychedelic churches deal with bad trips.

The new psychedelic churches in the US have emerged from older traditions, mainly from indigenous religions in the Americas. But the people in these new psychedelic churches in the US are mostly not indigenous Americans – they’re mostly white North Americans, of European ancestry. This can create ethical problems: Are the new psychedelic churches just exploiting indigenous cultures to satisfy their own modern white Western needs? Philosophy can help new psychedelic churches interact with non-Western indigenous cultures in respectful ways. And Platonism in particular can help people of European ancestry renew their connections to their own ancient psychedelic traditions. The theurgical Platonists were closely linked with ritual traditions that used plant substances to induce religious visions and ecstatic experiences. They were linked, for instance, with psychoactive rituals in the Greek magical papyri and Egyptian temples. Platonism can help people of European descent revive their own indigenous psychedelic traditions.

Psychedelic experiences reveal eight major religious themes: First, psychedelics reveal that the world is enchanted with extreme beauty, profound value, and deep meaning. Second, psychedelics reveal that reality is animated by divine creative energy. Third, all things are interconnected, so that reality is an organic unity. It resembles a musical symphony, in which all things are vibrating and harmonized. Fourth, psychedelics lead to immersive journeys through vast structures beyond our physical universe. These might be journeys through non-physical aspects of our universe, or through other universes in some multiverse. Fifth, psychedelic experiences often involve interactions with other-than-human agents, some of whom deserve to be called gods and goddesses. Sixth, reality is coherently organized by some divine mind or divine rationality. Seventh, reality is ultimately unified – it was creatively generated by the One, or the Source, or the ground of being, or God, or whatever you want to call it. We can commune with that ultimate unity in mystical experiences. Eighth, our personal journeys are not exhausted by our earthly lives. We will transcend death through rebirth. I’ve argued elsewhere that Platonism can make rational sense of all these aspects of psychedelic experience. Platonism provides a rational foundation for psychedelic rituals. This rationality helps defend psychedelic churches against the damning accusation that they are merely psychotic.

Much of the legal skepticism surrounding psychedelic churches involves the necessity of psychedelics: Why do you need psychedelics? Why can’t you get the religious benefits (such as mystical experiences) through meditation, chanting, fasting, or other non-psychedelic techniques? Here theurgists like Iamblichus gave an answer: Our merely human brains and bodies are not strong enough to contact the gods. Iamblichus then argued that the gods have placed symbols of themselves into plants (and other things). By eating or smoking these plants, these divine symbols become activated in our bodies, our bodies become receptive to divine powers, and we can commune with the gods.

New psychedelic churches need philosophy to help develop their rituals. They need philosophy to develop ethical codes both within and beyond their rituals. They need it to develop strategies for integrating psychedelic experiences with the rational demands of ordinary life. And to develop strategies for dealing with ontological shocks and bad trips. They need philosophy to respond to the damning accusation that psychedelic experiences aren’t genuinely religious but are merely psychotic. And to explain why psychedelics are necessary for their religions. Philosophers have lots of work to do!I’ve argued that ancient theurgical Platonists have already done much of this work. New psychedelic churches can greatly benefit by developing modernized forms of theurgy.