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Symposium
Don
Hill
The
Case for Ethnogens
Presented
Saturday May 11th at 4 pm
In
1965, a new book, The Politics of Ecstasy, is a hit on college
campuses.
Among other things, it says:
"The
political and ethical controversies over psychedelic plants
are caused by our basic ignorance about what these substances
do. They alter consciousness. But how, where, why, and what
for?''
The
writer is Harvard psychologist Timothy Leary. Shortly after
the book's publication, Leary urges a generation of children
to ''turn on, tune in'' and ''drop out'' A year later, 1966,
governments 'freak out'‚ and hastily declare war on all
hallucinogens, banning them outright.
Leary's
evangelism effectively killed formal scientific inquiry into
psychedelic drugs. Our understanding of them remains locked
in a time-warp. The little new research completed since the
1960s proposes that science should reopen the doors of perception,
slammed shut since 1966, and that we have much to learn about
entheogens.
Entheogen
means Œgod-containing‚ psychoactive plants ˜
herbs, mushrooms and animal-extracts ˜ that stimulate
human beings to an altered state of consciousness. These natural
hallucinogens have been used by indigenous people as sacraments
for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. Entheogens have
been used to ease the rites of passage from adolescence to
adulthood, birthing, and even death.
Don
Hill discusses how a religious sacrament employing psychedelic
plants ˜ declared illegal for most of us ˜ can act
as a vaccine against illicit drug-taking, and how for some
˜ the hopelessly addicted ˜ the Œdisease‚
has become part of their cure.
Don Hill - Biography
Don Hill hosts Tapestry, a national program on Radio One of
the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The weekly hour of
feature interviews and documentaries investigates religious
and spiritual life. He has a particular enthusiasm for the
borderland between mysticism and the frontier of science.
http://www.radio.cbc.ca/programs/Tapestry/
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