An Open Letter To The Minister Of Justice Regarding Psychedelic Use For Spiritual Purposes

Dear Minister of Justice,

I am writing to seek clarification on New Zealand’s current stance regarding psychedelic substances, particularly in the context where these substances are considered spiritual sacraments.

The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act states in Section 13 that “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief”. Section 15 states that “Every person has the right to manifest that person’s religion or belief in worship, observance, practice, or teaching, either individually or in community with others, and either in public or in private”.

A fair reading of these sections suggests that New Zealanders have the right to use spiritual sacraments.

Indeed, this is already true with regards to the religious use of wine in the Christian Eucharist. New Zealand Anglicans use wine as a spiritual sacrament, the psychoactive ingredient being, of course, alcohol. But there are many other substances that serve as spiritual sacraments in the religious and spiritual traditions of the world.

The use of psychedelics like psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca and other entheogens has been deeply rooted in various spiritual and religious practices around the world for millennia. These practices often regard these substances not merely as drugs but as sacraments crucial for spiritual exploration, healing and connection with the divine or the deeper self.

The Eleusinian Mysteries were the most famous of the mystery schools that characterised pre-Christian European spirituality, running for 2,000 years and attracting anyone who was anyone in ancient Greece or Rome: Socrates, Plato, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, Thucydides, Herodotus, Marcus Aurelius and the Emperor Julian were all known or believed to have participated.

Cicero wrote of them that “Though Athens brought forth numerous divine things, yet she never created anything nobler than those sublime Mysteries through which we became gentler and have advanced from a barbarous and rustic life to a more civilised one, so that we not only live more joyfully but also die with a better hope.”

Initiation into these mysteries involved the consumption of a drink known as kykeon. The mycologist R Gordon Wasson, the chemist Albert Hoffmann and the historian Carl Ruck have argued that the kykeon contained an entheogenic substance. Their book Road to Eleusis made a compelling argument that the use of psychedelics as spiritual sacraments played an integral role in the creation of Western Civilisation.

Robert Graves believed that linguistic evidence revealed the kykeon to include some kind of mushroom. Terence McKenna supported this assertion, pointing out that psilocybin-containing mushrooms had both the capacity to cause extreme psychospiritual change and the safety profile that would have allowed thousands to use them every year without getting a reputation for being dangerous.

The claimed benefits of the Eleusinian Mysteries included losing one’s fear of death, gaining a belief in the afterlife, learning to understand the will of the divine and improvement of moral rectitude. These benefits are very similar to those claimed by modern psychedelic users – Erowid.org lists hundreds of mystical experiences of people who have taken psilocybin.

It’s apparent from these arguments that the use of psychedelics as spiritual sacraments played a role in the moral and civil development of Western peoples during our greatest ages. But the potential of psychedelics to induce spiritual insight is not limited to the ancient age or to the West.

The Marsh Chapel Experiment conducted by Walter Pahnke in 1962 discovered that psilocybin is capable of inducing powerful spiritual experiences in modern people. A long-term follow-up questionnaire found “experimental subjects wrote that the experience helped them to recognise the arbitrariness of ego boundaries, increase their depth of faith, increase their appreciation of eternal life [etc.]”

One of the participants in the Marsh Chapel Experiment noted in the long-term follow-up, regarding death, “I’ve been there. Been there and come back. And it’s not terrifying, it doesn’t hurt.” Such an insight is profoundly spiritual. Many of the other participants made similar observations. One remembered their experience as “one of the high points of their spiritual life”.

This experiment demonstrated that the link between psilocybin and spirituality can be established within a modern, scientific paradigm. More recent research has supported this, with a 2024 paper in Current Psychology finding that “psychedelic use is linked with a variety of subjective indicators of spiritual growth, including stronger perceived connections with the divine, a greater sense of meaning, increased spiritual faith, increased engagement in religious and spiritual practices, an increase in feelings of unity and self-transcendence, positive changes in worldview, increased connectedness with others, and reduced fear of death”.

Albert Hofmann described how the teonanacatl of the Aztecs was a psilocybin-containing mushroom. This teonanacatl, or “flesh of the gods”, was used as a spiritual sacrament to commune with the divine. Indigenous North Americans have used psilocybin-containing mushrooms as entheogens for thousands of years. The Aztec use of entheogens, including both mushrooms and others, is extensive.

R Gordon Wasson believed that the soma referenced in the Rig Veda was the fly agaric amanita muscaria. Supporting his contention was the fact that Siberian shamans were still using this mushroom for spiritual purposes. More recently, Russian researchers have found evidence suggesting the active ingredient in soma was psilocybe cubensis. In either case, psychoactive mushrooms have a history of religious and spiritual use in India as well.

Although the record of historical psychedelic use is not as strong in Europe as it is in the Americas and Asia, there is still evidence of magic mushroom use in Spain from some 6,000 years ago.

In New Age spirituality, psychedelics are used extensively. In Nelson, where I am from, it’s common to use psychedelics as spiritual sacraments outside the purview of any institutional authority. “Mushroom Season” describes the time of the year beginning in early winter and ending around midwinter when psilocybin-containing mushrooms are foraged, dried and consumed as spiritual sacraments.

In light of all this, significant questions arise concerning the human rights implications of New Zealand’s drug laws as they pertain to psychedelic substances. Once it is understood that psychedelics are spiritual sacraments, there’s a compelling argument to be made that restrictions on their use infringe upon the freedom of religion and belief, a fundamental human right protected under various international treaties to which New Zealand is a signatory.

Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “everyone has the right to freedom of religion” and “to manifest his belief in practice”. Given the widespread use of psychedelics as spiritual sacraments throughout time and space, this right must surely encompass the right to use psychedelics to manifest spiritual belief in practice.

An appropriate reading of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act suggests that the right to use psychedelics for spiritual purposes is guaranteed. In reality, however, a hierophant who wanted to conduct a sacramental ritual akin to the Eleusinian Mysteries could potentially face life imprisonment for the supply of Class A drugs.

This letter seeks to understand how current New Zealand drug laws reconcile with the rights of individuals to practice their spirituality freely, especially when such practices involve substances that are currently classified under the Misuse of Drugs Act.

The laws against the use of psychedelics for spiritual purposes reflect, to a major extent, the historical Christian dogma against pharmakeia. This is the same dogma that led the Christian fanatics under Alaric to destroy the Eleusinian Mysteries in 396 by killing its priests, that led the inquisitors of medieval Europe to burn witches at the stake for using spiritual sacraments, and which inspired the Catholic invaders of the Americas to eliminate the sacramental use of teonanacatl by murdering the shamans who specialised in it.

It has also been suggested that much of the modern opposition to the use of psychedelics as spiritual sacraments comes from organised religious groups who want to position themselves as ticket-clipping intermediaries between the people and divinity. However, as can be seen from reading the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, Kiwis have the right to commune with divinity without the need of an intermediary. This necessarily means the right to use spiritual sacraments.

As other laws based on Christian prejudices – such as those regarding marital rape, homosexuality, prostitution and abortion – have been discarded in favour of greater freedom, the laws prohibiting the use of psychedelics for spiritual purposes ought to be discarded. Indeed, many countries and territories have reformed their psychedelic drug laws, based on arguments such as the ones made in this letter, plus others.

In closing, I respectfully request a detailed clarification or review of how New Zealand’s drug policies align with the principles of religious and spiritual freedom and human rights. Understanding the government’s perspective on this matter would not only inform those within New Zealand who use psychedelics as spiritual sacraments but would also contribute to broader discussions on drug policy reform that respects cultural and spiritual diversity.

Thank you for considering this important issue. I look forward to your insights and hope for a dialogue that can potentially lead to policies that honour both the law and the deeply held spiritual convictions of many New Zealanders.

Yours sincerely,

Vince McLeod

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How A Skilled Alchemist Would Use Cannabis

Now that cannabis is replacing alcohol among several demographics, many people are experimenting with how it is best used. Unfortunately, because of a century of prohibition, much of the common knowledge about how to best use cannabis has been lost. But it’s possible to reconstruct some of that lost knowledge, and in this essay I attempt to do so.

The best way, in my estimation, of asking how to best use cannabis is to ask: how would a skilled alchemist use it? This is to say: how would a master of the human psyche use it? Here we can learn from past masters.

Timothy Leary’s phrase “set and setting” is as relevant to cannabis use today as it was to psychedelic use 50 years ago, combining the mental and the physical considerations of psychonautics into one catchphrase.

The first part of this is the mindset, i.e. the mindset of the user. A skilled alchemist will make sure that they are in the right headspace before using cannabis. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to be happy. It means to be mentally prepared for a radical change in perceptions. Don’t use it while mentally preoccupied with something else.

Also, be positive. Don’t use it fearing instant schizophrenia forever – this is how people become paranoid. People use cannabis primarily to feel joy. That’s what it’s about. Cannabis is best used to bring colour and flavour to what would otherwise be greyness and dullness. Use it knowing that it has been used all over the world, for thousands of years, to bring happiness.

A great mindset is to use cannabis understanding it’s a medicine: partly a physiological one, partly a spiritual one. Therefore, focus on its healing aspects rather than potential destructive aspects. If you are already primed to relax because of a positive mindset, you are much more likely to have a good time than someone primed to anxiety.

The second part of Leary’s advice refers to the setting in which cannabis is used. This is primarily a matter of social environment and not physical.

Regarding the social environment, the most important thing is to not use it around dickheads. Cannabis will make you more sensitive to other people’s frequencies and vibrations, unlike alcohol, which makes you less sensitive. Therefore, on cannabis, it’s more important to be choosy about your companions. Don’t use it around anyone who is liable to send bad energy your way, because you will be extra sensitive to that energy.

Regarding the physical environment, the goal is to use it somewhere you won’t be disturbed. It’s best not to be in a crowded place where people will bump into you or trip over you. Possibly the best place to use cannabis is somewhere you can lie back and relax, but not fall asleep: a couch, a day bed, a bean bag etc. Possibly the worst is in public, at night, when drunks and law enforcement are everywhere.

Skilfully combining set and setting, the master alchemist can achieve several mental transformations using cannabis.

One of the most common is, as mentioned above, joy. Through using cannabis it’s possible to transmute all kinds of low-frequency (e.g. angry, sad, bored) emotional states into something higher, something appreciative. The power of cannabis to have this effect is well-known today: Kamala Harris said of it “It gives a lot of people joy, and we need more joy”.

A lesser-known transformation is increased creativity. As Bill Hicks liked to point out, an enormous proportion of the world’s creative output has been fuelled by drugs. Cannabis, in particular, is known for breaking the thought loops and preoccupations that hinder creative expression. The author of this article is, in fact, stoned right now!

Related to this is the use of cannabis as an aphrodisiac. Many of the common reasons for failure to perform sexually – excessive stress or tension, deficient desire – are psychosomatic in origin and can be alleviated with cannabis. It can also serve to empower the creativity that can transform mere sex-having into lovemaking. Magically speaking, it can help make the user more receptive to the casting of glamours, which intensifies the romantic experience.

The most incredible transformation achievable on cannabis, as well as the least understood, is enlightenment. Cannabis truly is a spiritual sacrament, and its use can lead to spiritual insights unattainable by Normies. Countless millions have, over the millennia, come to believe in reincarnation and karma thanks to spiritual receptivity granted by cannabis use.

The simple act of smoking some weed and staring at the Moon or the stars, and listening to the wind (or even the traffic), can be enough to transmute a lower frequency of consciousness into something touched by divinity.

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10 Months Of Taking Cannabis Tea For C-PTSD: A Review

I began taking medicinal cannabis in the form of tea about ten months ago, to deal with complications resulting from C-PTSD. This medicinal cannabis I received in the form of 35g bags of Shishkaberry buds, after getting a prescription from a cannabis clinic with an office in my city. I was prescribed this Shishkaberry to use in the form of medicinal tea. I found instructions for its preparation on WikiHow.

In my case of C-PTSD, hyperarousal is the primary symptom. This manifests in four major ways: as insomnia, nausea, anxiety and depression. Of these manifestations, the first two are mostly somatic and the last two are mostly psychological.

Because of these complications, sleep is the foremost problem. It doesn’t take much stress before the hyperarousal gets to the point where sleep duration and/or quality are affected. On account of the C-PTSD itself, relatively minor levels of sleep deprivation can have major effects in terms of emotional dysregulation, as well as suicidal and homicidal ideation. The distress of intense suicidal and homicidal ideation is sufficient that ordinary life is impossible. Therefore, getting enough restful sleep is a significant part of the battle.

Up until recently, I had managed this condition with a combination of pharmaceuticals (which I didn’t want more of) and cannabis (which I did want more of). This combination, in conjunction with a conscious choice to live a low-stress lifestyle, has generally succeeded in keeping the hyperarousal under control.

The pharmaceuticals consisted of anti-depressants and anti-psychotics. I have been prescribed five different types of each over the course of my 29 years as a psychiatric patient. Some pharmaceuticals became ineffective after years of use. Others had side-effects that were intolerable.

Pharmaceutical side-effects have included lethargy, sedation, mental fogginess, drowsiness, impotence, weight gain and digestive problems. The side-effects of the anti-psychotics are generally much worse than those of the anti-depressants. If the total effect of the C-PTSD is to make a normal life impossible, the total effect of the pharmaceuticals is not to make a normal life possible but to make the abnormal life tolerable. They do help with the hyperarousal, and therefore prevent the likely consequences of the hyperarousal getting out of control (i.e. suicide/homicide). But the side-effects are abominable.

Because of the severity of the pharmaceutical side-effects, I have often stopped taking prescribed medication. This is the reason for having tried five different anti-depressants and five different anti-psychotics over 29 years. Unfortunately, the problems with C-PTSD have proven extremely stubborn, such that life was impossible without the pills. Thus, it hasn’t been possible to escape the pharmaceuticals and their side-effects.

For these reasons, I have been excited about the possibility of being able to access medicinal cannabis, which seemed to have promise in treating hyperarousal without excruciating side-effects. Securing this access has been a 15-year battle from hell, but one that was won ten months ago. Since then I have been taking cannabis tea every night, starting with about 0.2 grams of ground cannabis buds in a tea strainer and working up to 0.45 grams.

The primary advantage to cannabis in tea form is that it provides most of the same benefits as taking it in joint form, but does not have the same side effects. Most of my medicinal cannabis consumption over the past 15 years has been in joint form. This has been great fun, but is far from ideal from a medicinal point of view.

The typical pattern when smoking a joint is to firstly experience a 30 minutes or so high of intense positive emotion, followed by a low lasting several hours, unless another joint is smoked, whereupon another high begins. Even while experiencing a low, being affected by cannabis is still good because it alleviates the nausea, headaches, suicidal ideation and homicidal ideation that is otherwise endemic to my C-PTSD experience. Thus, smoking joints, although far from ideal, is still much nicer than only having pharmaceuticals.

The great advantage that I have found with the Shishkaberry tea is that it alleviates the hyperarousal of C-PTSD without either the side-effects of pharmaceuticals or of smoked cannabis.

Drinking cannabis tea is a much smoother experience than smoking joints. The tea takes away the nausea and the psychosomatic pain, without the powerful psychoactive effects of inhalation (as fun as those are, they make it harder to get things done). As a result, when I am on the tea I don’t feel a strong desire to smoke cannabis.

Because the cannabis tea has alleviated the hyperarousal to some extent, it has been possible to halve the dose of the currently prescribed anti-depressant. This has led to benefits resulting from fewer pharmaceutical side-effects, such as some of my ordinary concentration ability returning, and some weight loss.

Currently I am enjoying the best sleep of my life thanks to the Shishkaberry tea. I therefore intend to keep taking it for the medium-long term future. The next step is to taper off the anti-depressants completely, which is made more realistic by the cannabis tea. If this is achievable then the cannabis tea would have had a massively positive impact on my life. So I recommend it to all with hyperarousal from a traumatic stress disorder.

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The Mithraic Ladder Of Drugs

Mithraic Ladders can be found everywhere in both natural and artificial worlds, because they are forms of the Great Masculine Axis. The drug world is no exception. This is to say that the various drugs in common use correspond to various levels of the Mithraic Ladder. This essay explains.

At the bottom of the Mithraic Ladder is lead. Lead is the dark element representing our basic fears for survival. It also represents Saturn, otherwise known as The Grim Reaper. Decay, deterioration, destruction and decrepitude are all energies of the level of lead. A person at this level will be merely surviving and nothing else.

The drug of lead is heroin. This is the drug often used by the survivors of the worst abuses and crimes. If a person has given up on life, heroin is often what they turn to. Appropriate to the level of Saturn, heroin (and the drugs like it) kills people the most easily. Heroin users are of the lowest frequency of any drug users.

The next step up the Mithraic Ladder is tin. Tin represents Jupiter, the jovial god of greatness and irresponsible good times. The characteristic emotion is joy – joy being what arises when the fear of the lead stage dissipates. People at the level of tin are looking to have a good time ahead of any other consideration. There is a high time preference.

Alcohol is the drug equivalent of the level of tin. On alcohol it’s possible to have a fantastic time in a very irresponsible manner. Much like Zeus, there are millions of drunkards out there who have children they conceived in a drunken frenzy, and then didn’t look after. If a story was written about Zeus today, he’d kill someone drunk driving.

The third step of the Mithraic Ladder is iron. This is analogous to Mars, the god of war. The emotion emblematic of this step is rage. Once you start having a good time, you quickly learn that there are people who want you to suffer and be enslaved instead. Thus, a person has to learn rage in order to live free.

The characteristic drug of this third stage is methamphetamine. Not only does meth use make people prone to violently attack others (even more so than alcohol), it’s also beloved of actual warfighters, most famously the German Army in France in 1940. Meth is an outstanding war drug because if your enemy needs to sleep and you don’t, then you win.

The fourth step of the Ladder is copper, analogous to Aphrodite, Venus and Freya, the goddesses of love. Copper is the stage one reaches after all the fighting. After all, men mostly fight to win women. So once a man has a woman his attention naturally shifts, from fighting to lovemaking.

The fourth level is represented in the drug world by MDMA, the love drug. MDMA is famous for increasing the release of oxytocin, the neurotransmitter that makes people bond with each other. If Aphrodite would cast a spell to infatuate someone today, she’d probably involve MDMA.

The fifth step of the Mithraic Ladder is silver. The brilliance of silver is analogous to the knowledge that is beloved of people at this level. Silver is more precious than copper, because this is the stage at which someone moves away from simple pleasures, and starts to become attracted to the truth. At this level a person starts to think of suprapersonal concerns.

Silver is analogous to tobacco, the drug of industry. This is not to say that tobacco is a particularly great drug – it’s not more fun than taking MDMA. But it’s possible to achieve awesome things with the diligence associated with tobacco use. Many of the engineers behind the great engineering projects of the 19th and 20th Centuries would have been habitual tobacco smokers.

The sixth step of the Mithraic Ladder is mercury. If silver is brilliance, mercury is genius. The quicksilver nature of mercury reminds of the quicksilver nature of the extremely intellectually gifted. A person at this level cannot easily be judged by the masses, who, being unable to distinguish genius from madness, cannot make sense of this level.

The characteristic drug of this sixth stage is cannabis. This is the drug used by most of the creative people today; the writers and musicians, artists and filmakers. People use cannabis for a variety of reasons, not all associated with the relatively high frequency of mercury. But those who do use it for creativity readily find a bottomless well of inspiration in the herb.

The top level of the Mithraic Ladder is gold. This represents a person who has transcended mere egoic concerns, and who has fully integrated their will with the Will of God. A person at the top of the Mithraic Ladder is beyond genius: they are a divine spark. They want for nothing, having returned to the natural state of bliss that is the province of pure consciousness.

The drugs representing the top stage of the Mithraic Ladder are psychedelics. These are the substances that can induce a person to see beyond the material illusions and to rediscover their own soul. Psychedelics also have the quality of being all but impossible to become addicted to. It’s common for people who take a strong dose of a psychedelic to not want to use them again for a while, in stark contrast to heroin and tobacco.

The Mithraic Ladder can be found everywhere in reality. In the world of drugs, it manifests as a spectrum with opiates and depressants at the bottom, and spiritual sacraments at the top.

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