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13:48

(In »Participatory culture, religious rituals and psychedelic practices«)

Syntheism is the home where psychedelic practices are carried out responsibly and with creativity with regard to what is best for the congregation and the participating agents. Where solid scientific facts meet reported spiritual experiences, a practice is constructed which is often carried out in defiance of prevailing norms and laws in the surrounding society. But psychedelic practice is an act of faith of the inquiring mind, a truth as an act, before which the syntheist never subordinates herself to the nation state and the narrow-minded and prejudiced norms of bourgeois society. This applies even if chemical liberation entails a syntheist martyrdom. The social arena is of course already filled with a host of different psychedelic practices. The Swedish historian Rasmus Fleischer also points to the fact that even pathologised psychological states such as eating disorders and other self-destructive behaviour must be regarded as psychedelic practices. Sexuality and entheogens are closely related to each other. This explains, for example, why it is extremely hard to be focused on both things at once. Both sexuality and entheogens are fundamentally a question of manifesting the drive, that is, to repeat what is meaningless ad infinitum. But through this meaningless repetition, meaning is created, where sexuality generates eros and the entheogens generate philia.