Topic
Browse primary sources, people, eras, and related themes connected to religion.
RV 8.48 and 9.113 on soma, immortality, and light
Two selected Rigvedic hymns to Soma: RV 8.48, the famous hymn of drinking soma and becoming immortal, and RV 9.113, a Soma Pavamana hymn asking to be placed in deathless worlds of light, delight, and fulfilled desire.
Sahagún’s Book 11 on herbs that intoxicate
Spanish entries from Book 11 of the Florentine Codex, the encyclopedia of Nahua life compiled by Bernardino de Sahagún and Nahua scholars at Tlatelolco around 1577. They describe ololiuhqui, peyotl, tlapatl, mixitl, and teonanácatl, plants and mushrooms that cause intoxication or visions, with an English translation made for the archive.
Mushrooms, coronations, and the feast of revelations
Three passages from Diego Durán's Historia describing raw mountain mushrooms in Mexica royal ceremonial life: a coronation feast, Durán's note that mushrooms rather than wine appear as the chronicle's intoxicant, and Motecuhzoma's feast of revelations.
Colonial anti-idolatry texts on divination, healing, and visionary plants
A set of Spanish colonial anti-idolatry excerpts describing ololiuhqui and peyote as oracular substances used in healing, theft investigation, divination, and diagnosis of sorcery. The source preserves rare early descriptions of visionary plant practice while also showing how clerical authorities criminalized and demonized Indigenous ritual knowledge.
Richard Spruce on ayahuasca, yopo/paricá, and Amazonian medicine-men
Richard Spruce's nineteenth-century account of caapi, aya-huasca, niopo, and paricá, based on field observations in the Uaupés, Orinoco, Rio Negro, Napo, and Pastasa regions. The excerpt records plant identifications, preparation methods, visual effects, ceremonial uses, and the role of payes in curing and divination.
From the lecture on mysticism in William James's Gifford Lectures, delivered in Edinburgh in 1901–2. James argues that nitrous oxide and ether show "our normal waking consciousness" to be only one type among many, then quotes Blood and J. A. Symonds's chloroform experience. His notes add Xenos Clark's letter on the revelation and an Englishwoman's ether dream.
NET Journal debate with transcript from Innisfree's LSD: The Great Debate
A televised debate between Timothy Leary and MIT professor Jerome Lettvin over LSD, religion, danger, judgment, and social control, staged at MIT's Kresge Auditorium and later broadcast by NET Journal.