Psychedelic Mysticism: Ritual, Religion, Weirdness and Integration

The Banking Hall, UCC Centre for Executive Education, 1 Lapps Quay, Cork, T12 VF82

Friday 1st May 2026 – Bealtaine (please register here)

10.00   Welcome – Jenny Butler & Oliver Davis

10.15   Julian Vayne, ‘Visions of Magic’

10.45   Sophie Casey, ‘Entities & ego death: mapping the neurobiological architecture of the N,N-DMT mystical experience’

11.15    Oliver Davis, ‘Psychedelic political sensibilities grounded in a mysticism of the ecstatic body’

11.45   Discussion

12.00   Lunch break*

13.00   Timmy Davis, ‘The Great Revelation of the Mysteries: weirdness and epistemic injury in the clinic of psychedelic experience and beyond’

13.30   Mark Elliott, ‘Apperceptive experience: what happens, what you experience and the entailment of messing around with the dynamic systems configuration of sensory processing’

14.00   Danny Forde, ‘Psychedelics are reality revealing: an outline and defence of psychedelic realism’

14.30   Discussion

14.45   Coffee break*

15.00   Jenny Butler, ‘Fairy Rings and Psychedelic Things: Interpretations of Fairy-Mushroom Encounters’

15.30   Patrick Everitt, ‘Entheogens, Esotericism, and Entities: Integrating weirdness in the psychedelic philosophies of Terence McKenna and Robert Anton Wilson’

16.00   Discussion

16.15   Conversation: Psychedelics, Politics and Policy (Oliver Davis & Chris Read)

17.00   Close

This event has been made possible by support from UCC Futures - Future Humanities Institute and the Department of French. Attendees affiliated with UCC can register to attend here. A separate registration process for the wider Cork community will be announced soon.

This is an in-person only event.

* Please note that while registration is free, refreshments are not provided.

Overview of the day

This one-day research workshop will bring into conversation a selection of international experts from different backgrounds, to make an original contribution to the emerging field of the psychedelic humanities. The conversation will be focused around mysticism, spiritual exercises and ‘weirdness’ (Erik Davis, 2019) and will explore the difficulties which users of psychedelics have in understanding mystical, religious, spiritual or simply weird sexual and other experiences occasioned by psychedelics. Mysticism is usually rather grudgingly acknowledged to be a significant facet of psychedelic experience by many of the biomedical researchers pioneering the ongoing ‘psychedelic renaissance’ – the rediscovery of the potential of these substances to treat a wide range of the world’s most costly mental health problems. Indeed, it has long been acknowledged that psychedelic experiences which involve a mystical dimension are correlated with better treatment outcomes. Nevertheless, many biomedical researchers today seek to downplay the mystical dimension, assuming that this is a prerequisite for social and regulatory acceptance of psychedelics as medicines. This workshop, timed to coincide with Bealtaine, aims to show instead why psychedelic encounters with mysticism should instead be prized, while also welcoming critical voices and opposing views.

Abstracts and speaker biographies

Julian Vayne, ‘Visions of Magic’

Julian Vayne initiates us into the secret lineage of mind altering substances in the Western Magical Tradition. A long strange trip from ancient mystery rites, through Elizabethan scrying rituals, to encounters with psychedelic entities in modern clinical research.

Julian Vayne has spent over four decades engaged in the study and practice of magic, meditation, and entheogenic ceremony. A prominent voice in contemporary occultism and co-organiser of the Breaking Convention conference he works at the intersection of esoteric traditions and modern psychedelic culture. He is a longstanding member of the Magical Pact of the Illuminates of Thanateros (IOT), AMOOKOS, and both the Alexandrian and Gardnerian lineages of Wicca. He teaches internationally, mentors practitioners, and facilitates ceremonies informed by chaos magic, tantra, and earth-based spiritualities. He is the author of numerous books, essays, and journals, with his psychedelic writing appearing across popular, underground, and peer-reviewed academic publications. Combining scholarly inquiry with extensive lived experience, his work encourages critical engagement, creativity, and grounded exploration, contributing to ongoing dialogues on the relationship between psychedelics, consciousness, and the occult.

Dr Sophie Casey (Physiology, UCC), ‘Entities & Ego Death: Mapping the Neurobiological Architecture of the N,N-DMT Mystical Experience’

This presentation maps the evidence surrounding the neurobiological architecture of DMT-induced phenomena by bridging receptor level pharmacology with transpersonal psychology in order to construct a robust neurobiological model of the DMT breakthrough state. Disintegration of the default mode network correlates with ego death, and can trigger a surge in global brain connectivity. These hyper-connected neural states may explain the generation of hyper-realistic hallucinations and autonomous entity encounters. Finally, by comparing DMT breakthroughs to near death experiences, this presentation will illustrate how extreme pharmacological or physiological shifts may produce shared ‘mystical’ neural signatures. 

Dr Sophie Casey is Lecturer in the School of Medicine at University College Cork, Ireland. She received a BSc Hons degree in Neuroscience from UCC in 2016. Following this, she pursued a PhD in the area of paediatric neuroimmunology, during which time she examined the temporal alterations in inflammation-driven molecular markers in clinical and preclinical cases of hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy with and without inflammatory sensitisation, as well as autism spectrum disorders. She was awarded a PhD in Medicine from University College Cork in 2021. Dr Casey’s current research focuses on the investigation of novel psychedelic inspired neuroprotective therapies for neurodegenerative diseases with an inflammatory milieu, and the specific mechanisms by which these compounds act within the nervous system. She is currently investigating the potential neuroprotective and anti-inflammatory action of psychedelic ayahuasca-derived harmala alkaloids in cellular models of Parkinson’s Disease.

Professor Oliver Davis (French, UCC), ‘Psychedelic political sensibilities grounded in a mysticism of the ecstatic body’

This paper draws on the extraordinary study of Saint Teresa of Avila by French feminist psychoanalyst and philosopher Julia Kristeva (Thérèse mon amour, 2008) and her suggestion that there is a divergence between cerebral and embodied types of mysticism within the traditions of Christian mysticism. Aldous Huxley, in The Doors of Perception (1954), draws on the dominant, cerebral, tradition when he evokes Eckhart and St John of the Cross and generally it is this cerebral tradition which has prevailed in psychedelic studies subsequently. Moreover, this cerebral or neurocentric bias aligns well with the neurocomputationalist paradigm now dominant in the biomedical research. I argue, conversely, that we need to rediscover the embodied mysticism of the ecstatic singular body, which Teresa, in Kristeva’s reading, reveals. Reconnecting with this suppressed – and feminised – tradition of mysticism, at least in its psychoanalytic translation, in turn grounds new conceptualisation of embodied psychedelic political sensibilities.

Professor Oliver Davis is Head of the Department of French at UCC, co-convenor of the Political Technologies research group and a Deputy Director of the Future Humanities Institute. His research spans contemporary French philosophy and theory, including radical political theory, queer theory and conspiracy theory, as well as the psychedelic humanities. He served as co-editor of the Frontiers in Psychology series on the psychedelic humanities and is a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Psychedelics and a member of the Drug Science Medical Psychedelics Working Group. Within this field, he has published on the pioneering psychonautic experiments with psychedelics by French writer, critic and visual artist Henri Michaux, and on the role of autonomy, heteronomy and ‘autoheteronomy’ in psychedelically assisted psychotherapy, among other topics.

Timmy Davis, ‘The Great Revelation of the Mysteries – weirdness and epistemic injury in the clinic of psychedelic experience and beyond’

As the use of psychedelics grows, as the sample size increases, so too will the weirdness and, in its wake, the epistemic injuries. These substances and the weirdest of the experiences they can precipitate, such as self loss, alien abductions and recovered memories of abuse or birth, can leave people questioning who they are and their ability to know what is real. Far from condemning their use on this count, contemporary psychoanalysis, with its commitment to methodological agnosticism, sees both personal and (cosmo)political value in such experimentation and the revelation of the mysteries…

Timmy Davis is the founder of The Psychedelic Experience Clinic, director of Psychedelic Policy and Regulation at the Centre for Evidence Based Drug Policy (CEBDP), policy director and co-founder of the Psilocybin Access Rights (PAR) campaign and a trainee at the Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis. He has provided psychological support on the psilocybin for treatment resistant depression trials at Kings College London and led teams of volunteers in welfare and harm reduction spaces such as Kosmicare at Boom Festival in Portugal and many music festivals in the UK. Timmy has authored and presented numerous papers including ‘New, Strange, Odd and Weird Perceptions – A Lacanian Approach to Psychedelic Experience’ (2020), ‘Ego, Death, Ego (re)Birth – What can be said of the psychedelic experience?’ (2025), ‘The Rips, Tears and Ruptures of Epistemic Injury – psychoanalysing the psychedelic phenomena of recovered memories of abuse, birth and alien abduction’ (2025) and ‘Kava: Honoured in the Pacific, Banned in the UK’ (2026).

Dr Mark Elliott (Psychology, Galway), ‘Apperceptive experience: what happens, what you experience and the entailment of messing around with the dynamic systems configuration of sensory processing’

At the beginning of psychological science, in his PhD thesis, Jan Evangelista Purkinje described the ‘appearance in mind’ of a variety of kaleidoscopic forms, colours and movements. Nearly two-hundred years later, we have measured and catalogued the exact same appearances – subjective experiences or apperceptions - resulting from our experimental manipulation of visual-cortical dynamics.  But neither we, nor Purkinje were by any means the first to experience such things. It appears, from the forms depicted in prehistoric art all over the world, that these appearances have been known for a very long time. So, why are they important enough to be preserved in ancient art? Their appearance occurs when the nervous system is disturbed beyond its capacity to function effectively, and this is key. Are they then gateway states, induced formally, leading to an entirely disembodied experience?  As well as describing these appearances, I will conclude by offering an opinion on their transcendental ‘function’.

Dr Mark Elliott has studied dynamic systems in perception for nearly thirty years with a very major emphasis on experimental techniques, this is to say getting in there, manipulating, altering and seeing what happens as a consequences of dynamic systems manipulation. Perhaps the most interesting outcome of this is the discovery of a direct structural isomorphism between the statistical structure of a dynamic stimulus and it’s (brain) response. Whilst in the role of Associate Professor at University of Galway since 2005, Mark was full Professor in the faculty of Design at Kyushu University, Japan between 2010 and 2019. In addition to this he has served as Chinese government visiting Professor at Shaanxi Normal University, X’ian, China (2018-2022)  and now for several years visiting Professor at IIT Kanpur, India. Having trained in the original Gestalt tradition in Germany, and in addition to his scientific interests, Mark is interested in the more general nature of symbolic representation. This interest presently extends to the interdimensional  physics of non-physical representational states. In this context he is perhaps better understood as a student of pre-Socratic, Gnostic and Hindu Yogas.

Dr Danny Forde (UCC, Philosophy), ‘Psychedelics are reality revealing: An outline and defence of psychedelic realism’

In this talk I defend psychedelic realism: the claim that high-dose psychedelic states are not mere hallucinations but often genuine revelations of mind-independent reality. Drawing on realist phenomenology, I show how ego-dissolution opens ‘ego-free seeing’, producing the unmistakable sense of the experience being ‘more real than real’. I then meet the three main objections (predisposition, differentiation, and chaotic peak-state) and conclude that psychedelics can function as precise metaphysical tools.

Dr Danny Forde is a philosopher whose work focuses on phenomenology, aesthetics, philosophy of language and psychotherapy. His monograph, Phenomenology of Psychedelic Experiences, was published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2025. He is also currently a trainee psychotherapist.

Dr Jenny Butler (Study of Religions, UCC), ‘Fairy Rings and Psychedelic Things: Interpretations of Fairy-Mushroom Encounters’

A diminutive fairy perched atop a large, white-spotted, red-coloured mushroom is a familiar image that appears in many contexts. This presentation traces the magical nature of mushrooms from Victorian-era literature, including Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, to cartoons of the 1980s and ‘90s to contemporary pop culture merchandise. In the folklore of Ireland and Britain, natural circular mushroom formations are known as ‘fairy rings’, considered to be the fairies’ dancing ground and entranceways to the otherworldly realm. Also frequent are legend motifs of being ‘turned around’, the experience of perceptual distortions of time or place, and visions or sightings of weird scenes and beings, which often correspond to first-hand accounts of psychedelic experience. Also explored in this analysis is the disjuncture between the more whimsical co-depiction of fairies and fungi that has persisted into modern pop culture and understandings of fairies and portals to the otherworld in spiritual traditions such as Paganism. 

Dr Jenny Butler is a Lecturer in the Study of Religions Department at University College Cork and a Principal Investigator of UCC’s Sustainability Institute. She is a member of the Board of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE) and founder of the ESSWE-affiliated regional network, the Irish Network for the Study of Esotericism and Paganism (INSEP). She is a member of the Editorial Board of Monad: Journal of Occultural Studies and of Praxis-Knowledge, the journal of the Research Network for the Study of Esoteric Practices, and of The Pomegranate: International Journal of Pagan Studies. Her research interests are at the nexus of folklore and religion and she is currently conducting an ethnographic research project on the otherworld, legends and landscapes, which you can read more about at otherworldly.ie.

Patrick Everitt, ‘Entheogens, Esotericism, and Entities: Integrating weirdness in the psychedelic philosophies of Terence McKenna and Robert Anton Wilson’

Terence McKenna and Robert Anton Wilson were two highly influential thinkers in the late twentieth century psychedelic underground, whose work fits neatly into the categories of entheogenic esotericism (Hanegraaff, 2012) and psychedelic philosophy (Lyon, 2023). Their ritual use of psychedelics and their reflections upon their exceptional experiences, informed by theories and practices derived from traditional tribal shamanism, modern psychology, and the western esoteric traditions, not only helped shaped the underground psychedelic discourse, but also highlights the ongoing cultural tension between reconciling scientific, skeptical attitudes with radically non-ordinary and exceptional experiences. In the 1970s, McKenna and Wilson’s entheogenic use of psychedelics catalyzed a series of increasingly weird visionary experiences for both men, culminating in contact-like phenomena with seemingly autonomous yet utterly mysterious entities who functioned as initiatory guides in the visionary realm. Both went on to spend the remainder of their lives coming to terms with their exceptional experiences, while also shaping the underground discourse through their public speaking and writings about psychedelics and magic. This talk will explore their practitioner-centric approaches to integration, inspired by their own entheogenic use of psychedelics, as opposed to strictly therapeutic uses. A central component of their decades-long integration process involved navigating the tension between their scientific worldviews and their experiences of forms of weirdness which are traditionally ascribed to supernatural agency. Ultimately, both McKenna and Wilson rejected any supernatural interpretations of their exceptional entity-contact experiences and instead adopted a skeptical, non-dogmatic, multi-model approach which allowed them to embrace the mystery of their experiences while retaining not only their sense of proportion but also their sense of humour.

Patrick Everitt is an independent researcher of western esotericism and psychedelic philosophy from Ireland. He completed the Masters in Western Esotericism at the Center for the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents in the University of Amsterdam, where his thesis investigated Aleister Crowley’s pioneering use of peyote for ceremonial magic in the first two decades of the twentieth century. His primary research interests are Aleister Crowley's philosophies of religion and magic, as well as entheogenic esotericism and psychedelic philosophy in the works of Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, and Terence McKenna. He has presented his research on esotericism, psychedelics, and philosophy at a range of international conferences and events, including the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism conference (ESSWE), the Interdisciplinary Conference on Psychedelic Research (ICPR), the Occulture Conference, the Finnish Interdisciplinary Conference on Psychedelics (Psykedeelit), the Irish Network for the Study of Esotericism and Paganism workshop, Breaking Convention, the Altered Conference, and the O.Z.O.R.A. Festival.

Chris Read

Chris was educated at McGill and McMaster Universities, and has been working in Ireland as a professional archaeologist since 1996. Helping design and develop a new, science-based archaeology course at IT Sligo (now ATU Sligo) in 2002, he has been lecturing there since 2003. For 15 years he taught a module entitled ‘The Prehistory of Sex, Drugs and Music'.  His research has focused primarily on the Early Medieval Period and deviant burials in particular. He has been working with the Max Planck Institute’s Department of Archaeogentics since 2014.