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Roger Heim

“I am a scientist!” Roger Heim’s interdisciplinary and transnational research on...

Roger Heim (1900-1979) was a French biologist whose research into psychedelic mushrooms transcended interdisciplinary and transnational lines. Heim collaborated with major figures in the mid-twentieth century psychedelic community, including the Wassons and Hofmann, and appraised their use in divination.
Eight Frequently Asked Questions About Ayahuasca Globalization

Eight Frequently Asked Questions About Ayahuasca Globalization

Four Chacruna Institute members sit down to address eight frequently asked questions about the globalization of ayahuasca. They address issues related to cultural appropriation, legalization, religion and spirituality and are careful to outline the positive and negative aspects of the current rapid globalization of ayahuasca use.
ecology psychedelics

Why Land and Ecology Matter for Global Psychedelics

Land and ecology matter to the global psychedelics movement because it is a movement born out of a long history of colonialism and land theft. The Indigenous peoples from which our psychedelic traditions originate continue to deal with the negative consequences of this colonial violence. Focusing on the Wixarika experience, Diana Negrin explores the intercultural work that needs to be done in order to help Indigenous communities thrive today.
Chacruna welcomes submissions to their Global History of Psychedelic Plant Medicines series.

Call for Submissions – Global History of Psychedelics

Chacruna invites submissions to our Global History of Psychedelics series. The ongoing series highlights the dynamic ways that historic traditions, cultures, and research spaces have contributed to the field of psychedelics. We seek submissions that explore historical topics, but may include other approaches from anthropology, philosophy, religious studies, gender & sexuality studies.
This is how jurema, a DMT-containing tree, helped the Pankararé people recover their land in Brazil

This is How Jurema, a DMT-Containing Tree, Helped the Pankararé People...

The Amaro Science Festival (Festa da Ciência do Amaro), open to the general public since 1995, provides a window into Pankararé's culture. Participants take part in a ceremony that involves the consuming of a drink made from the jurema-preta root, which contains DMT.
nectar of the blue goddess: consuming soma in west bengal india

Nectar of the Blue Goddess: Consuming Soma in Bengal, India

The question of what ingredients comprise the soma drink of Vedic myth has troubled scholars for centuries. Noting this history, Ian Baker uses this article to reveal a living tradition of Soma consumption in an ancient center of Tantric practice in West Bengal, India.
LSD can be connected to the history of ergot

Psychotropic Drugs from and in the Fields. Rural Roots and Collective...

Ergot is a parasitic fungus that grows on rye and serves as the raw material for lysergic acid (LSD). Through the story of ergot, Beat Bächi shows how the history of LSD is connected to the history of agricultural industrialization and the reorganization of seed breeding in Switzerland.
From Bwiti to Ibogaine and back: A Transnational History of Tabernanthe iboga

From Bwiti to Ibogaine and Back: A Transnational History of Tabernanthe...

Julien Bonhomme explores how Euro-American psychedelic communities have appropriated Bwiti ibogaine rituals, creating a liminal experience that incorporates from both traditions. For Western practitioners, ibogaine visions allowed individuals to see through themselves and recreate themselves as they desired in order to overcome their existential problems. While the Gabonese practitioners' visions more often reflected the images of mythical ancestors or relatives practicing witchcraft, rather than mirror-images of themselves.
Powick Psychiatric Hospital was at the center of lsd-assisted therapy discourse for a brief time.

Remembering to Forget: How the UK Disappeared from the Psychedelic Map

Between 1952 and 1964, the UK's Powick Psychiatric Hospital served as a center of LSD-assisted therapy. Ronald Sandison stood at the center of this activity, publishing papers in psychiatric journals and presenting at conferences, which temporarily brought the UK to the center of therapeutic LSD use. Wendy Kline explains why things changed in the mid-1960s.
Voacanga africana plays a role in the global history of psychedelics.

From Rubber Adulterant to Ceremonial Psychedelic: Voacanga africana in the Transnational...

Timothy Vilgiate looks at how the story of Voacanga africana is an example of how Western psychedelia co-opts Indigenous culture in order to create fictional "primitive others" that they can utilize for their own agendas. The idea of Voacanga africana as a ceremonial psychedelic ultimately serves less to reflect of African realities, and more to appeal to Western ideas of psychedelics as primordial elements of human mystical experience and spiritual life.
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