Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Prohibition: Its Roots and Bitter Fruit

 
By: Peter Webster
From: psychedelic-library.org
Download: mp3 audio
Download: text file - PDF file

Peter Webster's lecture presented at
ENCOD's Drug Peace Conference
a counter-event to the annual meeting of the
UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs
Vienna, 7-9 March 2008


"According to recent findings by a few intrepid researchers including Carl Ruck of Boston University, the Catholic Church was, however, no stranger to the use of psychoactive plants for attaining religious ecstasy. A long tradition of such use by the Church elite now appears to be the case, but the practices were reserved for only the highest echelons within the church, and completely prohibited for the general masses of Christians. The inner sanctum of the Catholic Church realized, of course, that if Christians were able to attain religious ecstasy and insight on their own with the aid of psychoactive plants, then the authority of the Church would be severely undermined, and their political quest for world domination damaged if not destroyed.

A main purpose of the Holy Inquisition was therefore to stamp out uses of psychoactive plants wherever they were to be found. And that included branding as heretics those European outsiders such as the medieval practitioners of the ancient traditions of witchcraft and alchemy, the pursuits of whom we now know were concerned with the use of psychoactive plants such as mandrake, belladonna, and other native European drug-plants. The doctrine of the Church therefore became one of public repudiation of drug use as a form of Gnostic heresy, while at the same time secretly preserving the knowledge of that use for the Church elite."

By: Peter Webster

Listen to the complete presentation: mp3 audio 
Read the complete presentation: text file - PDF file


Related videos from psychedelic-library.org

Psychedelics in Eden
The First Supper - by Peter Webster

A lecture first presented to the SISSC, Perinaldo, Italy, 2004.
Presented at the Albert Hofmann Celebration, Basel, 2006
RealVideo format, 1/4 resolution - 1 hour duration - filesize: 105MB

Heretical Visionary Sacraments Amongst the Ecclesiastical Elite
by Carl A.P. Ruck & Blaise Daniel Staples
A video slideshow narrated by Carl A.P. Ruck
RealVideo format, 1/4 resolution - 1 hour duration - filesize: 88MB

Melusina of Plaincourault
by Carl A.P. Ruck, Blaise Daniel Staples, and José Alfredo González Celdrán
A video slideshow narrated by Carl A.P. Ruck
RealVideo format, 1/4 resolution - 1 hour duration - filesize: 88MB 

The above RealVideo's are available as a full-frame DVD (720x576 PAL) info: psychedelic@wanadoo.fr

psychedelic-library.org

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