Post-enlightenment magic and occult grimoires and handbooks seamlessly blend the spiritual and physical, often obscuring naturalistic mechanisms to achieve incantations, spells, hexes, or conjurations. The Book of Mormon similarly blends the spiritual and physical to obscure the presence of entheogens to uninitiated readers. Early Mormon experiences suggest the use of hallucinogenic substances, common at the …
Speaker: Bryce Blankenagel
D&C, Cover-to-Cover, Inside-and-Outside
A secular Mormon and non-Mormon teamed up to read the Doctrine & Covenants cover to cover on a podcast, giving an insider’s and outsider’s perspective on Mormon canon and history. What did they learn from this endeavor? Bryce Blankenagel, Marie Kent
Revelation Through Hallucination
Given the unique psychoactive effects and abundant availability of myriad entheogens, there exists evidence that Joseph Smith used plant medicines to incite visions and personal revelations for himself and his parishioners. This model provides a much-needed naturalistic explanation for multiple instances of visionary experiences in Mormon history which have previously been explained with group-hallucination psychology …