Legal Worship

The United States Supreme Court established sound legal standards for psychedelic worship in the UDV case that involved the religious use of ayahuasca. The Court unanimously found that the group’s use of ayahuasca was protected under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), because it was safe and central to the group’s sincerely-held religious beliefs. They (the UDV) weren’t pretending to be religious. They were religious. A lower court further bolstered these standards in the Santo Daime case. Both court opinions are quite readable.

Use of psychedelic sacraments by TDA members

Psychedelic sacraments can be a part of TDA worship. TDA arose out of sacred psychedelic communion, where mushrooms dropped the veil to the Divine. In those communions, incredible visions of shapes, structures, lights, and colors revealed that mushroom mycelium offered a structural model that could promote worship and healthy religious communities. By replacing abuse-promoting attributes of religion with the gospel of autonomous religious exploration and devotion, individual worshippers, much like hyphae, organically build healthy, interconnected community that can hold and protect, rather than isolate, vulnerable individuals.

The TDA worship community has expanded beyond the first core group that regarded mushrooms to be a holy sacrament and, also, beyond psychedelic worship in general. Some members feel no call to worship that way. That is how autonomous worship works. While assigned doctrines, rites, and rituals can homogenize religious communities toward isolation, differences among autonomous worshippers actually foster connection. Ideas that aren’t heretical or eternally threatening are liberated to be fascinating, inspiring, tender, and even hilarious.

Still, though, without mushroom sacrament, there likely would be no TDA. For many, worship would be diminished, if our liturgy lost solemn reverence for sacred psychedelic vignettes and side-splitting laughter about divine divas and over-the-top gods that grab worshippers’ attention to teach, save, and redeem.

If you are prosecuted, more than just pointing at TDA, you likely would need to show that your worship with mushrooms is safe and central to the exercise of your sincerely-held religious beliefs. To do that, members might want to draft, continually update, and live by a divinely-inspired religious creed. For some, working on their creed is an important part of their integration process. It can become your sacred text. More important than use in a theoretical judicial proceeding, creeds can help members develop and exercise the contours of their religious beliefs.

Be aware that psychedelic sacraments are schedule 1 controlled substances. This means that psychedelic sacraments carry risks, such as, arrest and incarceration, termination of employment, and custody actions. In other words, don’t think religious protections always work like they should. Anyone who brushes off the possibility of governmental persecution is not thinking clearly.

Along with being sincere, religious use of psychedelic sacraments must be safe. Extensive resources exist regarding psychedelic safety. Study them before worshipping with psychedelic sacraments.