The Early Psychedelic Years with Dr Bill Richards

My unofficial Vital Student Zine features observations from the course and beyond

Harvard psychology professor Richard Alpert after he took LSD and remaned himself Ram Dass

Dr Bill Richards is a staple of the modern-day mystery school researching psychedelics. He’s worked alongside Abraham Maslow, Stanislav Grof, Walter Pahnke and more. Now installed at the Johns Hopkins Centre for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, he passed trade secrets on to Vital students.

Week four lecturer Dr Bill Richards volunteered for LSD testing as a restless theology student in post-WW2 Germany. He began working alongside Hanscarl Leuner, the German psychologist who invented Guided Affective Imagery (a perverse form of which was used in the brainwashing sequence of A Clockwork Orange), plus added both art and group therapy to LSD tests.

Richards went on to become the most prolific psychedelic researcher of all time, working alongside Walter Pahnke, Abraham Maslow, Stanislav Grof, and now Roland Griffiths: he was last out of Spring Grove in 1977, first into the fledgling Johns Hopkins Centre for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research in 1999, and is still working today. His book Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences is out now.

See Bill interviewed here plus a bunch more I put on this YouTube resource channel.

These five items I pulled from the week’s research are themed along Vital’s natural element-themed structure.

Approach: The Wisdom of the Human Mind

Therapy: Healing with Laughter

Space: Cosmic Midwifery

Medical: LSD - Did it Ever Go Away?

Integral: The Wrong Mysteries

Air provides an overview of approaches to psychedelic use, Fire concerns therapeutic applications, Water covers ‘space holding’ – the art of keeping it together, Earth is where you’ll find medical matters, and Ether discusses integration, the process of bringing psychedelic power into regular life.

Next issue: The real ‘new psychonaut’ London’s Dr David Luke reboots transpersonal psychology for the 22nd Century

Shamanism, Philosophy, and Ancient Greece with Dr Lenny Gibson

My unofficial Vital Study Zine #4 with observations from Vital Psychedelic Training and recent happenings in the space

‘Bacchus’ by Caravaggio at The Uffizi, Florence

Consciousness expansion: from cave painting, to the pyramids, and the first Psych Symposium at London’s National Gallery. How far have we got?

In week three Vital students heard from Dr Lenny Gibson, a clinical psychologist, philosopher and breathwork pioneer with ‘50 years of experience working with non-ordinary states of consciousness’ who nonetheless fitted in a storied career and founded transpersonal psychology non-profit Dreamshadow.

Gibson’s winsome and poingnant presentation elegantly examined western attitudes towards conscious thinking. His key point was that the world beyond words is no less valid – more so, even – than what we can describe. Psychedelics connect us with our intuition: as represented by the ancient gods Cerrunos and Baal, the greek god Dionysus (Bacchus to the romans) and, yes, Jesus of Arimathea who ‘turns the water into wine’. The first art, storytelling and culture derived from rites around this divine archetype.

Gibson references philosopher du jour Iain McGhilchrist, and I’ll pull out this particular quote from the Matter with Things author:

“As soon as you start saying anything about this realm, you falsify it. There are certain things that simply are resistant to normal language, normal exposition. But don’t for that reason not exist.”

But he began with a comparison to the Baka tribes whose genetics diverged 70,000 years ago. They describe their ceremonial group singing as “so beautiful the self melts away” just like both psychedelics and the ‘ecstatic’ techniques the rest of us have taken just as long to work out using science instead.

In the Zine this week, arranged in the synaesthesic schema used for Vital’s curriculum:

Approach: Move any mountain with neoshamanism

Therapy: ‘Celebrating the mysteries’ is the new euphemism of choice

Space: Can you hold your own?

Medical: The Microdose Age

Integral: Learning to fly

Plus! Graph of the Week and second hand books

These five items I pulled from the week’s research are themed along Vital’s natural element-themed structure. Air provides an overview of psychedelic use, Fire concerns therapeutic applications, Water covers ‘space holding’ – the art of keeping it together, Earth is where you’ll find medical matters, and Ether discusses integration, the process of bringing psychedelic power into regular life. Click straight through to your pet subject below.

Approach

Move any mountain with neo shamanism

Therapy

‘Celebrating the mysteries’ is the new euphemism of choice

Space

Can you hold your own?

Medical

The Microdose Age

Integral

Rising from the ashes of God, a new mythology

Kool-Aid Corner

To finish: trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life

Next issue: Dr Rick ‘Spirit Molecule’ Strassman spares no set or setting in his evalutation of the space right now

Exploring Indigenous Traditions and Wisdom with Dr Joe Tafur

My unofficial Vital Student Zine #2 with observations from Vital Psychedelic Training and recent happenings in the space.

Celia Vasquez Yui, ‘The Council of the Mother Spirits’ via Salon 94 and Shipibo Conibo Centre

In Vital’s second lecture Dr Joe Tafur blew minds with a clinical overview of shamanic plant medicine healing. It included his staggering current research into conditions possibly related to epigenetics that range from PTSD to cancer.

The family doctor from Phoenix, Arizona is also a shaman in the Shipibo curanderismo tradition trained by Maestro Ayahuasca Shaman Ricardo Amaringo. He’s the author of ayahuasca blockbusterThe Fellowship of the River (‘with introduction by Gabor Mat´é') plus the co-founder alongside Amaringo of Nihue Rao healing centre near Iquitos, Peru.

In the Zine this week, arranged in the Vital curriculum colour scheme:

Approach: Saving souls for three million years. And now with MDMA

Therapy: Psychedelic therapy is an art first and a science second

Space Holding: Songs in the key of life: energy and entropy

Medical: Public opinion counted a lot back then in things like pharmaceutical intervention. It still does

Integral: The Eagle and the Condor

These five items I pulled from the week’s research are themed along Vital’s natural element-themed structure. Air provides an overview of psychedelic use, Fire concerns therapeutic applications, Water covers ‘space holding’ – the art of keeping it together, Earth is where you’ll find medical matters, and Ether discusses integration, the process of bringing psychedelic power into regular life. Click straight through to your pet subject below.

Next issue: consciousness expansion from cave painting to the 2022 Psych Symposium

Why the Psychedelic Past is Important for the Future with Dr Erika Dyck

My unofficial Vital Study Zine #1 with observations from Vital Psychedelic Training and recent happenings in the space

Humphry Osmond attends a peyote ceremony in 1956

‘The first lady of LSD history’ lectured on the progressive, pioneering research of Humphry Osmond – inventor of the word ‘psychedelic’ – and Abram Hoffer in remote Saskatchewan from 1951.

Osmond, a British expat, was observing Native American peyote ceremonies by 1956. A year later he coined the term ‘psychedelic’ in his correspondence with Aldous Huxley. Hoffer trailblazed nutritional approaches like fasting and vitamin treatments.

I studied history at university (specialising in Renaissance Florence and the Medici, cheers) so Vital’s inaugural week lay seductively inside my comfort zone. I seized the opportunity to go down a historical rabbit hole… and this zine is longer than future weekly updates will be. Stay locked for bonus history posts out of all the feverishly downloaded PDFs.

Dr Dyck recently published graphic novel Wonder Drug: LSD in the Land of Living Skies, Psychedelic Psychiatry: LSD on the Canadian Prairies and  Psychedelic Prophets: The Letters of Aldous Huxley and Humphry Osmond. The latter she painstakingly assembled from private collections and museums alongside a team of volunteers. She’s identified the first woman to take LSD, Albert Hoffman’s assistant Susi Ramstein Weber – who also served as spontaneous sitter on Albert’s first two trips.

Dr Dyck is a key contributor to The Chacruna Institute of Psychedelic Plant Medicines, an organisation founded by Brazilian anthropologist Dr. Bia Labate ‘promoting a bridge between “traditional ceremonial use” and clinical and therapeutic settings.’

You can watch her regular lecture on Psychedelic History in Canada on YouTube, plus I thoroughly recommend What about Mrs Psychedelic? And a bunch more I put on this YouTube resource channel.

These five items I pulled from the week’s research are themed along Vital’s natural element-themed structure. Air – ‘Approach’ – provides an overview of psychedelic use, Fire concerns therapeutic applications, Water covers ‘space holding’ – the art of keeping it together, Earth is where you’ll find medical matters, and Ether discusses integration, the process of bringing psychedelic power into regular life. Click straight through to your pet subject below or just go back a page.

Approach: Are 21st Century ‘corporadelics’ doing enough for spirit, set, setting… and society?

Therapy: Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill W saw 12-step in a psychedelic vision and cured his depression with LSD

Space: Women Invented chill-out DJing

Medical: Public opinion counted a lot back then in things like pharmaceutical intervention. It still does

Integral: Original architect tripper ‘Kiyo’ Azumi was a core member of the Weyburn team and tripped with the nurses

Kool-Aid Corner: To finish: trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life