Interesting symposium in SLC

[Hagoth]

[moksha]

Will this article be discussed?

https://akjournals.com/view/journals/20 ... e-p212.xml

[Hagoth]

Will this article be discussed?

https://akjournals.com/view/journals/20 ... e-p212.xml

Yes, the authors of that article are among the speakers and organizers. By the way, some of them also just started a new sub-podcast under the Mormons on Mushrooms umbrella, called Roughly Stoned, to talk about this stuff. I generally find MoM kind of annoying, but I listened to a couple of these episodes and found them pretty interesting.

I was extremely skeptical about this hypothesis originally, but it really does fit a lot of weird details, particularly from the Kirtland era, when you take a closer look at pieces of the puzzle like Lumen Walter, the Ephrata Community, the behaviors of people at the Isaac Morley farm conference and the Kirtland temple dedication, the earliest anointings, etc.

[Ghost]

I was extremely skeptical about this hypothesis originally, but

Yes, when I've heard this come up occasionally in the past it's struck me as people just making things up because they feel they have to explain away some of the documented spiritual manifestations one way or another. Kind of like people do with apologetics, coming up with something, anything, that could possibly be an answer just to have an answer.

But at the same time, it is interesting to consider.

[Hagoth]

I was extremely skeptical about this hypothesis originally, but

Yes, when I've heard this come up occasionally in the past it's struck me as people just making things up because they feel they have to explain away some of the documented spiritual manifestations one way or another. Kind of like people do with apologetics, coming up with something, anything, that could possibly be an answer just to have an answer.

But at the same time, it is interesting to consider.

These guys are definitely overreaching the evidence, so everything should be taken with a grain of salt. I roll my eyes at a lot of it, but some of it is compelling. The strongest evidence, in my opinion, is that Joseph passed around buckets of his special sacramental "mixed" wine at the Kirtland Temple dedication, and that some attendees reported that only those who partook of it had visions. Of course, that might also be explained by three days of fasting followed by copious wine consumption, which is still pretty shocking to the average Mormon regardless of whatever else might have been in the wine.

Personally, I suspect Datura. There is a letter from Emma Smith to Joseph III which gives extreme step-by-step detail about how to prepare a medicinal treatment for a specific ailment from a specific part of the plant. I find it hard to believe that people could be that experienced with a plant like Datura and not be aware that other parts of it are powerfully hallucinogenic. It's also poisonous, so they would have to be very knowledgeable about how to extract useful compounds while avoiding deadly ones. If Emma knew this stuff, so did Joseph, and Frederick G. Williams (who grew medicinal herbs for Kirtland), and Lumen Walter, Joseph's mentor who was well versed in the occult books that describe these plants and also later operated an apothecary shop.

[moksha]

2023 Sunstone Summer Symposium
July 27-29, Sandy, Utah

Friday, July 28th
152: Mainstreaming Psychedelic Mormonism
2:30 PM – 4:00 PM

Description
As psychedelics are joining the mainstream, religions need to address the spiritual and mystical experiences people are having under the influence of these substances. Some Christian, Jewish, and Pagan groups are rising to the occasion by implementing psychedelic chaplaincies in order to facilitate the process of meaning-making for individuals who elect to undergo such experiences.

Recent, and past, research has shown that not only are set and setting important to the content and eventual outcome of a psychedelic experience, but the metaphysical framework in which the experience occurs also greatly shapes it, leading to the need for psychedelic-informed religious leaders to guide seekers through the experience in a constructive way.

Mormonism is at its core a “psychedelic” religion. Psychedelic substances contributed to the foundational experiences and events that gave birth to Mormonism. Early Mormons continued to use such substances at least through the dedication of the Kirtland Temple and perhaps even beyond that time. This use continued in the early church meetings and the Kirtland Temple dedication. Newspapers in the 1830s picked up on the unusually large number of visionary experiences had by its members maligning the Mormons to the fringes.

After the assassination of Joseph Smith, Jr., different branches of the Restoration continued to engage with psychedelic substances. The Brighamite tradition discontinued use of the entheogens present during Joseph Smith’s life, as well as most other psychoactive substances, even those arguably allowed by its Word of Wisdom (D&C 89). In the RLDS Church, Joseph's grandson, Frederick M. Smith, its third president and Joseph Smith’s grandson, “wanted to understand the revelatory process” as understood by his grandfather and devoted time and writings to "the wonders of peyote" in the revelatory process, later encouraging RLDS members to use peyote.

In this panel made up of the founding members of Harvard Divinity School’s Psychedelic Mormonism working group we’ll address the historical and contemporary usage of psychedelics in the context of the mainstream acceptance of these substances and where they fit into Mormon theology.

Speakers
Alex Criddle (he/him)(Speaker)
Michael Ferguson (he/him)(Speaker)
John Seth Anderson, Ph.D. (Speaker)
Don Bradley (he/him)(Speaker)
Trevor Luke (he/him)(Speaker)