The remains of John Wycliffe were exhumed in the year 1428, burned, and cast into the River Swift, a tributary of the Avon in central England, along with all his books. He had been Master of Balliol College, but was declared a heretic at the Ecumenical Council of Constance in 1415. His crime was that he had translated the Bible into English. The translation of Scripture by unlicensed laity was punishable by charges of heresy since it opened the floodgate of undisciplined exegesis.
The Second Vatican Council opened with intense optimism under Pope John XXIII in 1962 and closed under his successor Paul VI in 1965. This was the great liberalizing reexamination of dogma that accepted the Mass conducted in the vernacular. As part of this liberal movement, the vast documents of the Vatican Library were made accessible to young seminarians around the world. The doors closed with the ascension of Paul VI. Many student theologians deserted the Church, and even in so profoundly a Catholic nation as Ireland, there is now a great paucity of new young priests to replace the generation of Vatican II who now are reaching the age of retirement.
Knowledge is dangerous. It both jeopardizes the familiar establishment, even though it might be in error, and reveals long-suppressed secrets that encourage irresponsible innovation. Vatican II coincided with the realization of the role that visionary sacraments have played in the emergence of human consciousness and the relationship of mankind to spiritual dimensions. This offered new perspectives on the genesis of Christianity and on the marketplace of novel religions originating in the New World in the 19th and 20th centuries. The door that had opened was quickly posted with a placard announcing no admittance in the ensuing conservative papacies. The short glimpse into the mystical and hermetic tradition of Christianity left many young people perplexed and without guidance
Lightning bolt penetrating the spread vulva of the volcano, contemporary painting making the sexual metaphor explicit
Myth is a reflex of psychoactive sacraments—entheogens—going back in history to the Paleolithic Age, and these same myths serve as a guide for future spiritual development. The fundamental metaphor is the Cave, which has multiple referents of any enclosed space, from natural subterranean chambers and their connotations of the womb to architectural simulacra as temples and religious sanctuaries, from which the initiate experiences transcendence to the rim of the cosmos, known as the fiery realm of the empyrean.
Knowledge jeopardizes the familiar establishment, even though it might be in error, and reveals long-suppressed secrets that encourage irresponsible innovation.
The prototypical Cave is the volcano, in whose forge the soul is transmuted from base metal to celestial gold. A pillar of fire like a bolt of lightning transfixes the sacred mountain, providing a pathway uniting the alchemical caldera with the universe. The spiritual flight that opens the heavens has been at the origin of religions and has served as well for the inauguration of recent homebred adaptations of ancient mysteries in the New World.
Although all mythologies tell the same story, the traditions of Europe that derive from the Classical world and Judeo-Christianity were declared off limits for those seeking guidance for a tour of the empyrean. This was unfortunate, since Classical myth presents some of the most perfect exemplars of human experience and has served to delineate basic psychological paradigms.
In this guide we will correct the error by demonstrating the centrality of psychoactive sacraments to the evolution of the Western World. In the pages that follow, we will provide a historical perspective on the role of entheogens in the evolution of human consciousness, and a guide for those perplexed about both the dangers of their abuse and their potential for cognitive transcendence.