Liber Al vel Legis quotes our Lord, Hadit in Chapter II verse 22 saying:
“I am the Snake that giveth Knowledge & Delight and bright glory, and stir the hearts of men with drunkenness. To worship me take wine and strange drugs whereof I will tell my prophet, & be drunk thereof! They shall not harm ye at all. It is a lie, this folly against self. The exposure of innocence is a lie. Be strong, o man! lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture: fear not that any God shall deny thee for this.”
The Prophet of the Lovely Star followed this injunction in various ways at various times including taking the natural psychedelic mescaline and dosing participants in his London production of The Rites of Eleusis in 1910 with same.
During Crowley’s lifetime, the Swiss chemist Albert Hofman synthesized the most notorious psychedelic, LSD; Wikipedia states:
“LSD was first made by Albert Hofmann in Switzerland in 1938 from ergotamine, a chemical from the fungus ergot. The laboratory name for the compound was the acronym for the German Lyserg-säure-diäthylamid, followed by a sequential number: LSD-25.[13][15] Hofmann discovered its psychedelic properties in 1943.[16] LSD was introduced as a commercial medication under the trade-name Delysid for various psychiatric uses in 1947.[17] In the 1950s, officials at the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) thought the drug might be useful for mind control and chemical warfare and tested the drug on young servicemen and students, and others without their knowledge. The subsequent recreational use by youth culture in the Western world as part of 1960s counterculture resulted in its prohibition.[18]”
read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysergic_acid_diethylamide
In recent years, serious researchers have uncovered the secret history of the NON-recreational uses made of LSD and the research done on that before its prohibition and started new research into same. How to Change Your Mind is a new book by Michael Pollan discussing all this. Here’s an excerpt of The Guardian’s review:
“…in the 1990s that trapdoor reopened a crack: American scientists quietly began research indicating that psychedelics might enormously benefit the terminally ill, alcoholics and those with ‘treatment-resistant’ depression. How to Change Your Mind is Pollan’s sweeping and often thrilling chronicle of the history of psychedelics, their brief modern ascendancy and suppression, their renaissance and possible future, all interwoven with a self-deprecating travelogue of his own cautious but ultimately transformative adventures as a middle-aged psychedelic novice. In other words, this is a serious work of history and science, but also one in which the author, under the influence of a certain Central American toad venom, becomes convinced he’s giving birth to himself. Improbably, the combination largely works.”
Read the whole magilla, here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/22/how-to-change-mind-new-science-psychedelics-michael-pollan-review.
