This conference will bring together a wide range of scholars and practitioners to discuss complex relation between psychedelics and religion. We are now in the midst of what has been called a "Psychedelic Renaissance," which has raised many questions about the relationship between traditional uses of psychedelics (peyote, ayahuasca and psilocybe mushrooms) and modern scientific and medical research. Presenters will include indigenous artists and practitioners, psychiatrists, scientists and scholars in the fields of religion, anthropology and art history.
The keynote speaker will be Luis Eduardo Luna, an anthropologist and ayahuasca researcher, and the conference will also include a display of Mazatec art and a Rapeh ceremony. The event is free and open to the public.
Luis Eduardo Luna is a Guggenheim Fellow and Fellow of the Linnaean Society of London. He is the author of Vegetalismo: Shamanism Among the Mestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon (1986), and with Pablo Amaringo of Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman (1991). He is co-editor with Steven F. White of Ayahuasca Reader: Encounters with the Amazon’s Sacred Vine (2000, with a revised new edition in 2016), and co-author with Rick Strassman, Slawek Wojtowicz and Ede Frecska of Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys Through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies.
