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Author Lewis Ungit talks about his research into the links between psychedelics and the occult and shares an excerpt from his book, "The Return of the Dragon." Although Lewis Ungit released "The Return of the Dragon" a year ago, his book examining the links between psychedelics and the supernatural is more relevant than ever. So-called secular society continues to fill the post-Christian void with transhumanist fantasies and progressive utopian visions. Bitcoin bros "jokingly" reinterpret the second coming of Christ as the advent of artificial super intelligence. And everyone from prominent podcasters to suburban moms confront their demons in harrowing, healing...

The coroner overseeing an inquest into the death of a man at a retreat involving kambo frog poison ceremonies says she hopes the message "getting through" is the importance of calling triple-0. The inquest in Byron Bay is examining the death of Jarrad Antonovich at the Dreaming Arts Festival held at Collins Creek near Kyogle in October 2021. Mr Antonovich used kambo and the psychedelic substance ayahuasca while at the retreat, the court has heard, although the cause of death was a perforated oesophagus. The inquest is examining whether the excessive vomiting often associated with ayahuasca and kambo ceremonies caused...

An international team of anthropologists and bioarchaeologists has found the primary ingredients of ayahuasca — a plant-based drink that is reported to induce hallucinations and altered consciousness — in a 1,000-year-old leather bundle from a rock shelter in the Bolivian Andes.

Today's hipster creatives and entrepreneurs are hardly the first generation to partake of ayahuasca, according to archaeologists who have discovered traces of the powerfully hallucinogenic potion in a 1,000-year-old leather bundle buried in a cave in the Bolivian Andes. Led by University of California, Berkeley, archaeologist Melanie Miller, a chemical analysis of a pouch made from three fox snouts sewn together tested positive for at least five plant-based psychoactive substances. They included dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and harmine, key active compounds in ayahuasca, a mind-blowing brew commonly associated with the Amazon jungle... Miller's analysis of a scraping from the fox-snout pouch and...

High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week. Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy. "As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an...

The names of the tech workers in this story have been changed.Ten thousand miles from Silicon Valley, in a room near the Black Sea, Yegor Karpenchekov dreams of money. At night, while the rest of Odessa sleeps and cocaine smugglers drift in and out of the port under cover of darkness, Yegor logs onto FaceTime and talks to a 70-year-old woman in San Francisco. Her name is Sally Faubion, and five months ago she recruited Yegor from the freelancer marketplace UpWork to code her apps. She believes "divine intervention" brought them together; for Yegor, it was likely $20 per hour...

(CNN) -- Kyle Nolan did his research -- his mother made sure of that. She didn't want her 18-year-old son heading to the Amazon jungle at all -- let alone, without learning everything he could about the supposed "medicine" with the bizarre name that he insisted would help him turn his young life around. "I really tried to discourage him ... I kept telling him over and over, there are no easy answers in life," Ingeborg Oswald said. But she knew she couldn't stop him. Overshadowed by his "overachieving" triplet brother and sister, Oswald said Kyle "was going through this...

Tracy James knew the drug she'd just swallowed was working when her old injuries from high school started twitching with new life. Pressure throbbed from a forgotten busted knee. Her ankle tingled. The fingers she'd sprained roller-skating decades back began to ache. Whatever the 37-year-old had just taken, it shot feeling back into the long-gone ailments. "When I did vomit, it was one of the most amazing moments of my life." For the past 45 minutes, the hut had been dark and silent, the air dripping with jungle moisture. James and nearly 20 others were sitting cross-legged on ornate rugs....