After I finished my article about psychedelics and religion, I stepped from the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre and was confronted with three catering vans, each emblazoned with the acronym “LSD” set in a heart logo—you cannot get a much clearer sign than that, given that my article explicitly mentioned LSD. What conclusions can we draw from this sign? Unlike DMT, magic mushrooms, and ayahuasca, LSD is a European invention—a Swiss invention to be precise, the others come from South America. In its early iterations, LSD was privately shared between Hofmann, its inventor, Ernst Jünger and Armin Mohler—the man who originated the term “the Conservative Revolution”. It was only Timothy Leary who made LSD into a mass proposition.
Leary decided everyone needed LSD; and he himself, through synchronicity, ended up in the spot in the Algerian desert where Aleister Crowley summoned the beast Choronzon—by being buggered by the Jew, Neuberg. So Leary was under some negative influence—and he was warned by many people, from Aldous Huxley to Alan Watts, not to spread LSD about to the general public; and yet he decided to do otherwise—and the results were negative.
However, given the sign (“I heart LSD”) and the fact LSD was originally an elitist affair, I conclude that LSD has a future in European spirituality; indeed, as with penicillin, it was discovered through serendipity—Hofmann didn’t set out to develop a psychedelic; it was synchronistic. LSD could be used, in prophylactic amounts, to stimulate an initial disengagement from “problem-solving consciousness” with suitable supervision, within a ceremonial context—a new Eleusinian Mystery. Men like Leary always promised “new rituals” and “helpers” for trips, but these never materialised because they were not sincere. The drug should never be allowed for the general public and I do not refer to a “micro-dose”—habitual, “goal-orientated” consumption; I refer to what might be a one-off ceremonial use. Indeed, it might be a suitable way to induct a knight into the order of the Roundtable…