---
domain: spirituality
tags: [harmonism, wheel-of-harmony, wheel-of-presence, spirituality, entheogens, field-map]
content_layer: bridge
doctrinal_status: clouded
breadth: full
depth: introductory
craft: clean
published: "2026-05-17"
---
# Entheogen Field Map — Voices, Organizations & Landscape

> **Harmonism Location:** Wheel of Presence → Entheogen Pillar
> **Date:** March 2026
> **Source:** Claude conversation — comprehensive mapping of the psychedelic/entheogen/sacred plant field

---

## Foundational Intellectual Lineage

- **Aldous Huxley** — *The Doors of Perception*; perennialist-phenomenological framing of the psychedelic experience
- **R. Gordon Wasson** — Ethnomycology; the Mazatec velada; brought psilocybin mushrooms to Western awareness
- **Albert Hofmann** — LSD synthesis (1938/1943); later philosophical reflection on entheogens
- **Stanislav Grof** — Transpersonal cartography; holotropic breathwork; perinatal matrices; the elder architect of consciousness mapping through psychedelics
- **Terence McKenna** — Speculative-visionary framing (stoned ape hypothesis, timewave); influential but epistemically uneven
- **Ralph Metzner** — Harvard lineage carried into ecological and alchemical directions
- **Ram Dass (Richard Alpert)** — Harvard lineage carried into contemplative practice (Be Here Now)
- **Huston Smith** — Perennialist philosophical lens; *Cleansing the Doors of Perception*
- **Alexander Shulgin** — Rediscovery of MDMA; *PiHKAL* and *TiHKAL*; systematic exploration of phenethylamines and tryptamines
- **Claudio Naranjo** — Early integration of iboga and ayahuasca into psychotherapy; bridged indigenous practice and clinical work

---

## Living Voices — Clinical & Scientific Axis

### Tier 1: Field-Defining

- **Robin Carhart-Harris** (UCSF, formerly Imperial College) — Leading neuroscientific theorist; entropic brain hypothesis; REBUS model (Relaxed Beliefs Under Psychedelics). Scientific correlate of mystical opening.
- **Matthew Johnson** (Johns Hopkins) — Psilocybin for addiction and depression; bridges clinical and philosophical
- **Roland Griffiths** (Johns Hopkins, d. 2023) — Among the most important figures in legitimizing psilocybin within mainstream science. Legacy continues through the Hopkins center.
- **Rachel Yehuda** (Mount Sinai) — Trauma biology credibility applied to MDMA research
- **David Nutt** (Imperial College) — Drug policy reform; neuropsychopharmacology
- **Rick Doblin** (MAPS founder) — 40+ years building infrastructure for clinical legitimacy; the most important policy figure in the field's modern history

### Tier 2: Major Contributors

- **Gül Dölen** — Neuroplasticity research; psychedelics reopening critical periods of social learning (one of the most theoretically significant neuroscience findings in recent years)
- **Nolan Williams** (Stanford) — Accelerated therapeutic protocols
- **Michael Bogenschutz** — Psilocybin for alcohol use disorder
- **Alan K. Davis** — Clinical trials, 5-MeO-DMT research
- **Stephen Ross** (NYU) — Psilocybin for end-of-life anxiety
- **Ben Sessa** (UK) — MDMA-assisted therapy
- **Joshua Siegel** (Hopkins) — Psilocybin and brain connectivity desynchronization
- **Ben Kelmendi** — OCD and psychedelics
- **Amy Lehrner** — VA psychedelic-assisted therapy for veterans

### Key Popularizers & Bridge Figures

- **Michael Pollan** — *How to Change Your Mind*; single biggest mainstream popularization event of the last decade
- **James Fadiman** — *The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide*; microdosing protocol framework
- **Paul Stamets** — Mycologist; psilocybin advocate; commercial operations (Fungi Perfecti); most publicly visible mushroom voice
- **Gabor Maté** — Trauma-informed clinical framing applied to ayahuasca work

---

## Living Voices — Philosophical & Transpersonal Axis

- **Alberto Villoldo** (Four Winds Society) — Embodied shamanic practice mapped to energy centers; Q'ero and Amazonian lineages. *Already integrated into Harmonism via eight-chakra system. A primary cartography.*
- **Dennis McKenna** — Ethnobotany; more empirically grounded than Terence
- **Jeremy Narby** — *The Cosmic Serpent*; DNA-vision hypothesis connecting molecular biology with ayahuasca phenomenology
- **Chris Bache** — *LSD and the Mind of the Universe*; most serious modern attempt at transpersonal cartography through sustained high-dose sessions
- **Amanda Feilding** (Beckley Foundation) — Bridges philosophical and scientific; instrumental in enabling Imperial College research; consciousness-science champion
- **Benny Shanon** — *The Antipodes of the Mind*; most rigorous phenomenological analysis of ayahuasca cognition from philosophy-of-mind standpoint
- **Graham Hancock** — Popularizer of entheogenic origins-of-consciousness thesis; broad reach but less rigorous

---

## Indigenous & Sacred-Traditional Lineages

### Ayahuasca Traditions
- **Shipibo people** (Peruvian Amazon) — Primary lineage most Westerners encounter; time-honored plant-spirit shamanism; icaros (healing songs); pattern cosmology representing the oneness of creation
- **Santo Daime / União do Vegetal** — Syncretic Brazilian ayahuasca churches; formalized sacramental container
- **Mestizo curanderismo** — Mixed-lineage healers throughout Upper Amazon (Peru, Colombia, Ecuador)

### Psilocybin Mushrooms
- **Mazatec tradition** — María Sabina's lineage (Oaxaca, Mexico); the original indigenous container for Western psilocybin encounter

### Peyote / Mescaline
- **Native American Church** — Peyote sacrament; legal religious exemption in the US
- **Wixárika / Huichol** (Mexico) — Peyote pilgrimage tradition; among the oldest continuous ceremonial uses

### San Pedro / Huachuma
- **Q'ero people** (Peru) — Primary carriers of Andean mesa tradition; San Pedro ceremony; direct descendants of Inca lineage. *Villoldo's primary indigenous source.*

### Iboga
- **Bwiti tradition** (Gabon) — Iboga as sacrament; initiatory and healing contexts; 24+ hour journey; considered a "reset" for mind, body, spirit

### Western Bridge Figures (Serious Lineage Work)
- Alberto Villoldo (Q'ero and Amazonian)
- Rak Razam (*Aya: Awakenings*)
- Gabor Maté (trauma-informed ayahuasca)
- Hamilton Souther and established Western-trained curanderos in Iquitos

---

## Organizations

### Research Institutions
- **Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research** — Premier academic node
- **Imperial College Centre for Psychedelic Research** (London) — Carhart-Harris legacy; Nutt's base
- **UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics** — Third major academic hub
- **Mount Sinai** — Yehuda's trauma-focused MDMA work

### Non-Profit Research & Advocacy
- **MAPS** (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) — Founded 1986; most important organization in the field; incubated Lykos Therapeutics for MDMA; hosts Psychedelic Science conference
- **Beckley Foundation** (Amanda Feilding) — Foundational funder and research partner
- **Usona Institute** — Non-profit psilocybin drug development; counterweight to for-profit model
- **Heffter Research Institute** — Funds rigorous research; historically enabled Hopkins and NYU studies

### Commercial / Pharma
- **COMPASS Pathways** — Psilocybin; publicly traded; pharma-oriented
- **Gilgamesh Pharmaceuticals** — Bretisilocin (GM-2505); acquired by AbbVie for up to $1.2B in 2025 (first major pharma entry)
- **Cybin (now Helus)** — Psychedelic drug development
- **Delix Therapeutics** — Non-psychedelic neuroplasticity analogs (compounds without the subjective trip); key company to track in the non-hallucinogenic frontier
- **Lykos Therapeutics** — MAPS-incubated MDMA drug development; FDA rejected application in 2024 over methodological concerns

### Policy & Reform
- **Drug Policy Alliance** — Broader drug policy reform
- **Students for Sensible Drug Policy** — Grassroots
- **State-level programs:** Oregon Measure 109, Colorado Natural Medicine Health Act

### Conferences
- **Psychedelic Science** (MAPS) — Flagship global conference (Denver 2025)
- **ICPR** (Interdisciplinary Conference on Psychedelic Research) — Europe's most scientifically rigorous gathering
- **ISRP** (International Society for Research on Psychedelics) — Academic society
- **Breaking Convention** (UK) — Broad multidisciplinary

### Media & Analysis
- **Psychedelic Alpha** (Josh Hardman) — Best independent analytical newsletter covering commercial and regulatory landscape
- **Blossom Analysis** — Conference and research tracking

---

## Key Structural Tensions (2026)

1. **Pharma-medicalization vs. sacred-access:** The central conflict in the field. FDA-pathway (COMPASS, AbbVie/Gilgamesh, Cybin) versus decriminalization and state-regulated programs (Oregon, Colorado).
2. **Reductionist vs. transpersonal framing:** Clinical trials isolate pharmacological mechanism; indigenous and transpersonal traditions insist the subjective-spiritual dimension *is* the medicine.
3. **Non-psychedelic analogs:** Delix and others developing compounds that deliver neuroplasticity without the experiential journey — challenges the mystical-experience hypothesis.
4. **Indigenous sovereignty vs. Western extraction:** Ongoing tension around cultural appropriation, biopiracy, and commercialization of sacred traditions.
5. **FDA setbacks:** Lykos MDMA rejection (2024) raised the bar for trial design and shifted timelines.

---

## MDMA — Positioning Note

MDMA is a purely synthetic empathogen — no indigenous ceremonial lineage, no plant-spirit relationship, no traditional container. Derived from safrole (sassafras oil); substituted phenethylamine; rediscovered by Shulgin in 1976; therapeutic legitimacy through the clinical-pharmacological pathway (Shulgin → MAPS → Phase 2/3 trials → trauma-processing model).

**Harmonist positioning:** Outside the five cartographies as substance (modern synthetic, no lineage); inside them as territory (the Anāhata Heart-axis is what every cartography converges on naming as primary cultivational site — *kardia*, *qalb*, the Bhakti devotional Heart, *munay*, the Chinese Heart-Shen seat). Properly applied as both therapeutic instrument for targeted trauma work and as Heart-register transpersonal vehicle when intention is set right, within sustained practice and the discipline of rare-and-prepared use. Bears a Jing cost the Taoist framework reads precisely as serotonergic depletion and post-use Shen disturbance.

Full canonical treatment: [[MDMA]].

---

## Harmonism Integration Notes

**Voices most coherent with Harmonic Realism:**
- Grof — cartography of consciousness
- Villoldo — embodied shamanic practice mapped to energy centers
- Carhart-Harris — entropic brain as scientific correlate of mystical opening
- Bache — sustained transpersonal exploration
- Shipibo / Q'ero lineages — indigenous cosmology treating entheogenic encounter as diagnostic and energetic

**Epistemological mapping:** The clinical-pharma axis operates at the rational-empirical layer — necessary but insufficient. The full entheogen encounter requires sensory → rational → experiential → mystical layers of the Harmonic Epistemology. The indigenous traditions naturally operate across all four layers simultaneously.

**Wheel of Presence location:** Entheogens as a practice within the broader context of consciousness work — not isolated pharmacology but embedded within Breath, Peace (Ajna), and Love (Anahata) as the three essential practices. The entheogenic encounter is a catalyst, not a substitute, for the daily cultivation of presence.
