This month The Psychedelic Society of Bristol is proud to facilitate an evening's presentation of three talks by authors Robert Dickins, Rev. Danny Nemu and Peter Sjöstedt-H of the Psychedelic Press (UK), encompassing an exploration of the role of psychedelic drugs in history, philosophy and poetry.

Nietzsche – Drugs and Dionysus

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is known as a the most ferocious of atheists, the man who declared that "God is dead". Yet, underlying this modern mask lies a type of anti-clerical spirituality catalysed by a profound use of psychoactive drugs. Peter Sjöstedt-H will introduce the world's ultimate antichrist and reveal the drugs that inspired his Dionysian faith.

Bio: Peter Sjöstedt-H had been a philosophy lecturer in London for a number of years before he started his current PhD in the Philosophy of Mind. His papers, presentations and public courses chiefly consider the themes of consciousness, psychedelic phenomenology, and nihilism. He has authored 'Noumenautics: Metaphysics – Meta-ethics – Psychedelics', and he is the inspiration behind the new philosopher Marvel Superhero, Karnak.

The LSD Poetics of a Psychedelic Society

There was a time in the early Sixties when psychedelic society was not a hope or a dream, but rather a reality. Poets of the time looked back to the ancient world to imagine what the power of LSD was, and they used the drug to great effect to critique the modern world with its nuclear pretensions and weaponised psychedelia. This talk picks out some of these lessons and how they can positively inform the psychedelic movement, or indeed, society in general today.

Bio: Robert Dickins is the Editorial Director of the Psychedelic Press. A published author, writer, and poet, Robert’s research centres around the role of psychedelics in literature. His postgraduate research, in the medical humanities and undertaken with the University of Exeter, examined how certain LSD-using psychiatric approaches in the 1950s and 1960s gave rise to certain forms in literature.

Drugs in the Bible

“Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard, Spikenard and saffron; cane and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and agarwood, with all the chief spices”: Not only are nearly all of the plants listed here in the Song of Songs psychoactive on their own, but the combination of some of them into the anointing oil reveals that the ancient Hebrews were very adept at working with synergies to trigger incredibly powerful mind-blowing experiences.

Bio: Danny’s background is in the history and philosophy of medicine. He first encountered the Santo Daime ayahuasca tradition in Japan, and followed the trail back to the Brazilian Amazon to study it as a medicine at its roots. The sandfly that gave him the bacterial parasite leishmaniasis helped this endeavour along a great deal. The dietas took eight months, 10 kilos, one wife and a pair of rose-tinted spectacles, and left him with a deep respect for the complexity and intelligence of the natural world.