Matters of Life & Death: Psychedelics, spirits and the philosophy of Harry Potter
Culture is increasingly interested in psychedelic drugs. Whether it’s Silicon Valley execs micro-dosing LSD to turbocharge their meetings, Americans booking ayahuasca weekends in Mexico, or rafts of studies suggesting ketamine can really help in treating depression, we’re all taking drugs much more seriously than any time since the 1960s counterculture.
But what does this all mean?
Should we welcome this as simply another frontier in medical science, or are these ‘spiritual practices’ grounded in the occult? Are they anti-Christian? Have believers been wrong all along in their traditional hostility to mind-altering substances? What is at stake with our spiritual lives when we start to fiddle around with chemicals in the brain?
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