Cult of the Divine

3 minutes read time.

A trickster is a revealer of truth. 

A magical tree, trickster serpent, and human are at the center of an apparent psychedelic drama in the Garden of Eden.

This origin story hints that plants are a gateway into expanded states of divine consciousness.

For many witches, healers, and shamans, plants and plant spirits play a significant role in dissolving the veil between the material and non-material realms.

They create a bridge to altered states of awareness that allow for ecstatic union with the cosmos.

To Be Like God

Ecstatic witchcraft paths emphasize working in trance states, which induce non-linear states of consciousness, expanded awareness, and increases power.

While these non-linear states can be reached without consciousness altering plant medicines, plants and psychedelic plants carry a special kind of magic.

For millennia plants have been taking humans on journeys to other realms, showing us the strangeness of the Universe and our multidimensional position within it.

Cultures from all over the world have sacred plant medicine traditions (1) so it make sense that we might find plant traditions in the Bible as well.

Eve eating the forbidden fruit, guided by a serpent, a primordial spirit symbolic of evolution, creation, and regeneration, offers a compelling story for how humans remember their magic.

In Bereshit 3:4-5 it says,

‘וַיֹּ֥אמֶר הַנָּחָ֖שׁ אֶל־הָֽאִשָּׁ֑ה לֹֽא־מ֖וֹת תְּמֻתֽוּן׃

And the serpent said to the woman, “You are not going to die,

כִּ֚י יֹדֵ֣עַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים כִּ֗י בְּיוֹם֙ אֲכׇלְכֶ֣ם מִמֶּ֔נּוּ וְנִפְקְח֖וּ עֵֽינֵיכֶ֑ם וִהְיִיתֶם֙ כֵּֽאלֹהִ֔ים יֹדְעֵ֖י ט֥וֹב וָרָֽע׃

but God knows that as soon as you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like divine beings who know good and bad.”

Is the Forbidden Fruit Psychedelic?

Maybe. But even if it is not revealing hidden plant practices in the Jewish tradition, it is still highlighting the human potential to be ‘like divine beings’ through the ingestion of substances.

Remembering Our Divinity

Why humans were not to have access to their own experience of their divinity as told in the Genesis story is unclear to me. But one reason could be due to a shifting religious narrative.

At the time of the transition from early Israelite polytheism to monotheism, Asherah or tree and serpent veneration were becoming increasingly taboo (The Serpent Symbol in the Ancient Near East).

The witchcraft I practice recognizes us as part of the great mystery. We can embody our god-like nature and be a healing force for the collective, not aiming towards perfectionism, but an acceptance of our position within the cosmos.

We are travelers inhabiting a physical body, divine beings able to stretch and merge consciousnesses through the magic of space, time, and soul.

Some plant medicines support us in removing the boundary that separates our minds from the Infinite, ultimately helping us to remember our divinity and oneness.

This gives us an opportunity to more fully enjoy the delights of being human; all the creativity, pleasure, and beauty while embodied.