LECTURES
Program for the Evolution of Spirituality at Harvard Divinity School
“Psychedelic Pasts & Fascist Futures: The Secret History of the Deep Ecology Movement”
In this paper I will explore the understudied relation between the movement of psychedelic seekers that arose in the 1960s, and the subsequent rise of radical environmental activism in the 1970s. The philosophical touchstone for radical environmentalism is Deep Ecology, a loose body of intellectual inquiry dedicated to realizing a collective form of post-human consciousness. Variously termed “non-anthropocentrism” and “eco-centrism,” this mystical transformation entails the dissolution of individual subjectivity into a wider, more holistic form of awareness that includes the perspectives of the animal world, plant life, and even the geographic terrain itself. Deep Ecology literature presents this metaphysical shift in consciousness as the only means by which humanity will avert total planetary catastrophe. My argument will first identify the conspicuous silence on the part of radical green ideologues concerning the mechanism by which this operation will be accomplished. Next, I will demonstrate how the architects of Deep Ecology appropriated the consciousness- expansion discourse of psychedelic evangelists in the 1960s as the mechanism of eco- salvation, but obscured this fact for fear of persecution during the War on Drugs. Finally, my paper will conclude by showing how this policy of guarded reticence has been exploited by eco-fascists, who have gained a large measure of support within the radical environmentalist milieu by offering their own “organicist” model for uniting humanity within a singular, collective consciousness.
Harvard Psychedelic Walking Tour
While a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard Divinity School, I led a series of research seminars, Global History of Psychedelic Spirituality: Cultures, Histories, and Practices and Modern Psychedelic Spiritualities In Historical Context: Explorations in the Ludlow-Santo Domingo Library. These seminars culminated in the creation of the Harvard Psychedelic Walking Tour, a free audio guide detailing how the Harvard community has shaped the modern history of psychedelic culture. Here is the text that accompanies the walking tour:
“Welcome to the Harvard Psychedelic Walking Tour. This podcast will take you to six sites in Cambridge, each foundational to the history of psychedelics at Harvard University, and to the development of psychedelic culture more generally. Take the audio with you and walk to the sites yourself, or recline in your preferred locale and enjoy this audio tour wherever you are.
Content writing, editing, and narration: Joe Archer, Jeff Breau, Paul Gillis-Smith, Christian Greer, Anna Mansueti Production and sound editing: Paul Gillis-Smith.”
Rejected Religion podcast about Kumano Kodo
“In this discussion, Michelle and Christian share their experiences with pilgrimages, and how they came to write their book about the Japanese pilgrimage route known as the Kumano Kodo. As many may not have had their own experiences with pilgrimages, they talk about the reasons that people might choose to go on a pilgrimage, what the purpose is, and how it's not always a 'religious' thing. We also discuss the liminal aspect of the pilgrimage road, the different types of spirits that one can encounter as the pilgrim enters the 'other' space on the road, and how these encounters change the perspective of the pilgrim during the pilgrimage, but also afterwards. This conversation also includes some information about the mythology of the Kumano region of Japan, plus an interesting finding by Christian about the political side of the Kumano Kodo as a UNESCO heritage site, plus much, much more that can't be included in a short summary!” - Rejected Religion podcast
Harvard Medical School Continuing Education: Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy conference
Cautions & Critiques Rooted in Historical Knowledge
In this lecture, I will underscore the ways in which religious meanings have been associated with psychedelics across time and space. This historical survey will then be brought to bear on today’s “Psychedelic Renaissance,” as we will pay special attention to the ways in which unspoken religious biases informed the ways neuroscientists and research clinicians use terms such as “mystical,” “spiritual,” and “religious.” As will become clear, the usage of these terms within psychedelic clinical trials is far from value-neutral, and belies a problematic naiveté with respect to their complex (and often contradictory) meanings of religious terminology.
Promo vid for Chacruna’s Psychedelics & Religion forum
The Chacruna Institute has organized 9 unique conferences in multiple countries. Each year they focus on different themes at the cutting-edge of psychedelic culture that are largely absent from the mainstream conversation. The Religion and Psychedelics Forum featured four days of panels and discussion exploring the role psychedelics may have played in the history of religion, as well as the role that religion now plays in the modern psychedelic renaissance. I spoke about the Psychedelic Church movement.
Arcane Worlds: New Frontiers in the Study of Esotericism promo video
Each summer and winter, I lead an intensive course on the study of esotericism at the History of Hermetic Philosophy department at the Uni of Amsterdam. This video introduces the summer course. As I explain, the goal of this course is to dive deeper into the study of esotericism. In this three-week summer course, you will study in-person with some of the most respected academics in the fields of esotericism, alchemy, gnosticism, art and occultism, conspiracy theories, the New Age, and psychedelic culture. During classes, students will make use of primary sources, as well as secondary literature that clarify the way in which esoteric ideas have circulated and continue to circulate in both mainstream culture and more marginal contexts. This program is offered in cooperation with the Centre for the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, the world’s leading institute for academic research and teaching in the field of (western) esotericism, located at the University of Amsterdam.
Mind, Body, Health, & Politics
Dr. Richard Louis Miller is an American Clinical Psychologist, Founder of Wilbur Hot Springs Health Sanctuary, and broadcaster who hosts the Mind Body Health & Politics talk radio program from Mendocino County, California. Dr. Miller was also Founder and chief clinician of the nationally acclaimed, pioneering, Cokenders Alcohol and Drug Program. Dr. Miller’s new book, Psychedelic Medicine, is based on his interviews with the most acclaimed experts on the topic. In this episode, he interviews J. Christian Greer, and together they discuss the Grateful Dead, psychedelic community, the history of drugs, etc.
Harvard Religion Beat podcast
“Psychedelics, Spirituality, and a Culture of Seekership”
In this episode of Harvard Religion Beat, J. Christian Greer is going to talk about the role psychedelics might play in the future of religion.
12 May 2022
A conversation with melanie bonajo
“Navigating Psychedelic Dimensions”
In this session, melanie bonajo will speak with Dr. Christian Greer about psychedelic substances and their connection to various strains of esoteric spirituality. The conversation will offer an exploration of psychedelic experimentations from the past, present, and the future, though special attention will be paid to the contemporary moment, and the problems that define it. Such key issues include climate change activism, Black Lives Matters, social media addiction, and the psychological effects of the pandemic. In addition to these topics, melanie and Christian will discuss their own, embodied experiences in and around the world of witchcraft, and its revitalization by psychedelic substances.
18 November 2021
Keynote for Esotericism & the Varieties of Transformation conference
“The Transformative Potential of Researching Esotericism: Parliament Funkadelic as Case Study”
This lecture addresses the potential for the study of esotericism to transform the way in which we construct narratives about the past, present, and future. It begins by surveying how a new generation of scholars of esotericism is transgressing the barriers that traditionally enclose academic knowledge as an “ivory tower.” As will be demonstrated, this cohort is transforming the study of esotericism itself by offering a more equitable means of access to the field.
The lecture then pivots to a case study drawn from my own research into psychedelic spirituality. As is the case with so much in our field, the world famous funk group, Parliament Funkadelic, has not received much scholarly attention. This blindspot is not a narrative oversight, but rather the result of a historiographic misconfiguration. As I will make clear, the historiographic apparatus of the “counterculture” has distorted the research on psychedelic spirituality, and specifically marginalized the experiences of people of color, as well as the movement of interracial religious communities they formed. By dismantling the conceptual apparatus of the “counter-culture,” my research shows how religious innovation, and not opposition or deviance, is the core feature of psychedelic spirituality. Applying this conclusion to the history of Parliament Funkadelic, my lecture introduces a new historical phenomenon, termed the “hip strain of civil rights,” which has the potential to reorient contemporary discussions of race, psychedelics, and esotericism.
27 July 2021
Rejected Religion Pod E19 Christian Greer - Chaos Magic Part 1: Etic Examinations
This month's episode is the first in a 2-part series about chaos magic. Dr. Christian Greer talks about the history of modern magical groups and how these earlier groups led to the birth of the chaos magic current. Christian begins by talking about why the topic of magic (in all its forms) is relevant as an area of research and study. He then gives a brief history of modern and contemporary ritual magic groups, and how these, along with other influential movements of the time, informed the major figures associated with chaos magic. We then move the discussion to talk about the larger chaos magic current in more detail.
Visions of the Occult Promotional video
The goal of this course is to offer an introductory overview of the study of esotericism as a discipline both historically and in the present. In this two-week online winter course, we will investigate the key thematic aspects of Western esotericism, as they have manifested themselves historically within currents such as Hermeticism, gnosticism, astrology, alchemy, magic, to name but a few. This program is offered in cooperation with the Centre for the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, the foremost academic institution for the study of Western esotericism, located at the University of Amsterdam.
Rejected Religion podcast
In Part 1 of this 2-part interview, Christian will go into the history of the concept of laughter found in American religion/spirituality, as well as talking about the term 'psychedelicism' and the ways that psychedelics were viewed with regard to spiritual growth. We then get into the Discordians, their history, their ideas about chaos and hoaxes, and how Lee Harvey Oswald fits into the picture.
Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast
Was invited by Jesse Jarnow to be a guest on the official Grateful Dead podcast. Great interview, and production on this one. My section start around ~24:45.
SWPACA conference
Dark Psychedelia panel
In her primer to esotericism Sane Occultism (1938), Dion Fortune declared “it may be axiomatic that any one who suggests the use of drugs for raising consciousness is definitely on the Left-hand Path.” Her appraisal seems particularly incongruous with respect to psychedelic culture, popularly identified with the promotion of peace, love, and mystical oneness. Popular appearances aside, Fortune astutely identified a potent subzeitgeist that subsequently emerged within the psychedelic milieu. This roundtable explores some of the psychedelic figures, movements, and teachings that draw upon an explicitly sinister aesthetic as their source of power.
Dr. Erik Davis will excavate the weird fictions whose renewed popularity in the 60s and 70s helped construct a dark visionary template for the drug culture. Dr. James Riley will consider J.X. Williams’ allegedly “cursed” film The Virgin Sacrifice (1969) as an example of “acid horror”: a potent, talismanic mix of psychedelia and ritual imagery. Dr. Amy Hale will explore the unsettled spaces between object and subject that surround the dark psychedelic feminine, from the art and ritual of the mid-century magician Marjorie Cameron to the occult and violently speculative worlds of Tai Shani. Dr. J. Christian Greer will offer an analysis of the reception history of Charles Manson, who was hailed as a hero and inspiration for psychedelic ideologues in the 1980s.
RebPsych 2020
“The Promise and Perils of Psychedelic Therapy: Historical and Contemporary Social Justice”
The United States is currently undergoing a “Psychedelic Renaissance.” Driven by mental health professionals, this "rebirth encompasses dozens of clinical trials reappraising the therapeutic value of psilocybin alkaloids (“magic mushrooms”), alongside laboratory research on other substances similarly proscribed under federal law. With surprising uniformity, advocates of this new wave of psychedelic research repudiate the psychologists and psychiatrists of the late 1950s and 1960s, whose work pioneered the ideology of “psychedelicism.” The experimental research agendas established by Timothy Leary’s generational cohort is conflated with the libidinal excesses of the hippie movement, and thereby rejected outright. According to the literature, the Psychedelic Renaissance is a paradigm shift.
While psychedelic researchers are desperate for “containers” more conducive to occasioning the transcendental experiences associated with psychedelic mysticism, their ideological repudiation of the counterculture, has taken the last seventy years of vernacular psychedelic knowledge off the table. As a result, psychedelic researchers, physicians and therapists today know more about the indigenous rituals of ayahuasca shamans in the Peruvian amazon than their own, home-grown and eminently sophisticated ritual containers created right here in the United States over the last half-century.
Psychedelics and the Future of Religion series at Harvard’s CSWR
“Sisters of the Psychedelic Revolution”
Hippie culture left a lasting impression on the Mid-West of the United States. Historians tend to portray the Haight Ashbury of San Francisco and the East Village of Manhattan as America’s foremost psychedelic hotspots, but it was in the college town of Ann Arbor, Michigan, that the psychedelic revolution seems to have succeeded, at least partially. Leni Sinclair and Genie Parker were at the heart of Ann Arbor’s hippie scene. From their commune, Trans-Love Energy, they co-coordinated a robust alternative community, which included numerous underground newspapers, free health care clinics, free healthy food programs, a network of crashpads and communes, and weekly concerts in the park. Their motto was “S.T.P.,” which stood for Serve The People. When the Black Panther Party called on the hippies to join them in an alliance, Sinclair and Parker co-founded the White Panther Party, which later broadened its coalition of allies and became the Rainbow People’s Party. Honoring the global anti-colonialist struggle, these sisters of the revolution made a good-will mission to the Vietcong during the height of the Vietnam War, too.
In their discussion, J. Christian Greer (postdoctoral fellow, CSWR) asked Leni Sinclair about her celebrated career as a photographer, anthropological documentarian, and psychedelic idealist. The conversation also touched upon Genie Parker’s pioneering astrology column, “People’s Astrology,” her role in the formation of a “peace force,” known as the Psychedelic Rangers, that was to replace the police, and her political career with the Human Rights Party. Altogether, we hoped to lift the curtain on the totally electric, psychedelic scene of Ann Arbor, and reveal another dimension of the Age of Aquarius.
Recently awarded the Kresge Foundation’s Eminent Artist Award, Leni Sinclair was born in Konigsberg, East Prussia, and immigrated to the U.S. in 1959. Sinclair arrived just in time to play an active role in bringing the hippie scene to Detroit, much of which she captured on film.
Genie Parker “dropped out” of her life in Vernon, Texas, to join the Trans Love Commune during the Summer of Love in 1967. Her commune’s bold social initiatives, including the creation of a “peace force” to take the place of the police, succeeded as a result of her institutional acumen. Today, Parker is celebrated as the first non-Chinese woman credentialed to take on disciples for the Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan.
Power Dynamics in Research Methodologies with Marginalized Spiritual Traditions
Anthropologist Giovanna Parmigiani, historian J. Christian Greer, and religious studies scholar Russell Burk joined our assistant director, Natalia Schwien, to discuss their research methodologies when working with these marginalized spiritual communities and the steps they take to support a productive and respectful dynamic between themselves and their interlocutors.
Reasonably Irrational: Theurgy and the Pathologization of Entheogenic Experience
In this lecture, Professor Wouter Hanegraaff from the University of Amsterdam discussed the relevance of entheogens to theurgy and ritual evocation in Roman Egypt, with special attention to the story of Thessalos, the so-called Mithras Liturgy, and the Neoplatonic practice of Iamblichus.
Professor Hanegraaff argued that if we deny or marginalize the clear evidence for entheogenic practice in these contexts-while acknowledging the spectacular visions and experiences that are claimed in the texts-it is hard to avoid traditional pathologizing interpretations of experiential practices that, in fact, can be rationally accounted.