Psychedelic Gnosis: Historical and Archetypal Perspectives
Dr. Hereward Tilton
The West is currently witnessing a “psychedelic Renaissance” as a rapidly growing body of academic research demonstrates the medical value of psychedelic compounds for the treatment of conditions such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, drug addiction, and end-of-life anxiety. While this course offers students a brief introduction to recent developments in psychedelic neuroscience and psychotherapy, its primary aim is to place the contemporary resurgence of interest in psychedelics within a broader historical and mythic context.
Before the current “Renaissance,” the psychedelic counterculture of the 50s and 60s instigated a “revolution” with far-reaching social and political consequences. Moving beyond the narrowly scientific research, we will explore thematic continuities in the literature, music, and art of both psychedelic eras. Our reading list will include emerging voices in the contemporary scene, as well as classic works by authors including Huxley, Leary, McKenna and others.
Widening our historical perspective still further to consider the employment of natural and synthetic entheogens in European alchemical, magical, and gnostic settings, we will find that a number of common themes in 20th and 21st century psychedelic literature have surprisingly archaic roots in the West, including the quest for a transmuting elixir, the awakening of the divine feminine, the discovery of an archetypal language, and more.
What can this wider perspective tell us about our current psychedelic Renaissance? Conversely, can contemporary psychedelic neuroscience shine an edifying light upon these archetypal dimensions of psychedelic experience? And what is their relationship with the indigenous shamanic traditions which have exercised such a decisive influence upon Western psychedelic culture? As we explore these questions, we will discover a new relevance for the age-old quest for gnosis, a form of self-knowledge which is simultaneously a knowledge of the foundations of the awe-inspiring cosmos around us.
Please Note: Our “evergreen” courses are not live but pre-recorded.
Before the current "Renaissance," the psychedelic counterculture of the 50s and 60s instigated a "revolution" with far-reaching social and political consequences. Moving beyond the narrowly scientific research, we will explore thematic continuities in the literature, music, and art of both psychedelic eras. Our reading list will include emerging voices in the contemporary scene, as well as classic works by authors including Huxley, Leary, McKenna and others.
Hereward Tilton (BA Hons I, Ph.D., FHEA)is a religious studies scholar who has taught on the history of alchemy, magic, and Rosicrucianism at institutes dedicated to the study of Western esotericism within the University of Exeter and the University of Amsterdam. His interest in psychedelia was first kindled in his early teens, and he was inspired by experiments with LSD and lucid dreaming to study the work of Jung and Eliade as an undergraduate. Since receiving his doctorate he has conducted research on alchemical entheogens in early modern Germany under the auspices of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and he has translated and introduced an eighteenth-century Austrian black magical manuscript dealing with traditional psychoactive fumigations called Touch Me Not: A Most Rare Compendium of the Whole Magical Art (Fulgur Press, 2019). In his most recent books, The Path of the Serpent, Vol. 1: Psychedelics and the Neuropsychology of Gnosis (Rubedo Press, 2020) and its forthcoming sequel, he applies recent discoveries in psychedelic neuroscience to the symbolism and techniques of a European gnostic tradition with historical and phenomenological ties to Indo-Tibetan tantra. On occasion, Hereward has drunk ayahuasca with the Dutch neo-shaman Arno Adelaars, and he has translated Ayahuasca: Rituals, Potions, and Visionary Art from the Amazon (Divine Arts, 2016), a book co-written by Adelaars with Christian Rätsch and Claudia Müller-Ebeling.
Syllabus-At-A-Glance (In-depth syllabus and extensive readings lists available to enrolled students in course home page).
Week 1. Introduction: The Tree of Gnosis
In this introductory class, we will examine the concept of psychedelic gnosis with recourse to the symbol of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden.
Week 2. Sunrise at the Cosmic Axis: The Peyote Pilgrimage of the Wixáritari
In this class we will explore the shamanic worldview expressed in nieríkate, the sacred designs granted to the Wixáritari in their visions; our purpose will be to contrast the modern Western use of psychedelics with the indigenous use of entheogens.
Week 3. The Heart and the Higher Soul: Entheogens in Western Magic
The most commonly employed psychoactive plants were nightshades such as mandrake, henbane, and devil’s trumpets; however, flora rich in DMT were also utilised in Western magic. In this class we will examine the diverse purposes of natural and alchemical entheogen use in pre-modern Europe, and we will identify important historical precursors to modern psychedelic gnosis.
Week 4. The Serpent on the Cross: Proto-Psychedelic Gnosis in Fin-de-siècle Occultism
In this class, we will consider the extent to which entheogen use among fin-de-siècle occultists prefigured the psychedelic gnosis of the Psychedelic Era.
Week 5. “Moloch Whose Name is the Mind”: MKUltra and the Origins of the Psychedelic Era
Using Allen Ginsberg’s peyote vision of Moloch as our interpretative key, in this class we will explore the role of powerful economic, military, and industrial forces in the genesis of the psychedelic era.
Week 6. Return to Eden: Aldous Huxley and the Birth of the Psychedelic Paradigm
In this class we will examine Huxley’s role in the transition from the psychotomimetic to the psychedelic paradigm, focusing in particular on the inspiration he found in Advaita Vedanta and the Behmenism of William Blake.
Week 7. Surrender to the Void: Leary, Lennon, and The Tibetan Book of the Dead
In this class, we will examine the Beatles’ Tomorrow Never Knows – widely regarded as one of the most important songs of the sixties – as both a conduit for Leary’s ideas and a musical evocation of psychedelic gnosis.
Week 8. Alien Gnosis: Terence McKenna and the Message from the Overmind
Steeped in the work of Jung, Eliade, and the texts of gnosis East and West, Terence McKenna had undertaken a bizarre quasi-alchemical experiment with his brother Dennis in the Amazon, and in the post-Cold War era he gave voice to a distinctive neo-shamanic paradigm which revived the central Romantic themes of the sixties psychedelic counterculture: namely, the liberation of women, nature, and sexuality from an evolutionarily maladaptive ‘dominator culture’.
Week 9. The Fractal Tree of Life: Near-Criticality and Gnosis as an Archetypal Phenomenon
In this class, we will review the diverse experiences and interpretative frameworks we have studied, and we will assess psychedelic gnosis as a phenomenological correlate of the restructuring neurological events identified by contemporary psychedelic neuroscientists in neuroimaging experiments. Adopting a holistic, non-reductive perspective, we will examine these events as neurobiological markers of the individuation process described by Jung – a process which can be catalysed by a number of gnostic technologies of consciousness beyond psychedelics.