LILA visionary.art
Dossiers / Dossier 5
Dossier 5 · 2026

Entheogenic Shamanism

The Visionary Pharmakon

Pieces6
Reading1h 43m
Edited byLILA

The Greeks had one word - pharmakon - for both remedy and poison. This dossier takes the plant as an instrument rather than a sacrament or a drug. The plant arranges a condition. Jonathan Ott, who with Ruck, Bigwood, Staples and Wasson coined the word 'entheogen'. Ott had no patience for the phrase psychedelic renaissance: nothing had died, so nothing was being reborn - the practice has been continuous for ten thousand years and is still going strong.

6 pieces

Contents

i

An Interview with Pablo Amaringo

The late Pablo Amaringo trained as a curandero in the Amazon, healing himself and others from the age of ten, but gave this up in 1977 to become a full-time painter and art teacher at his Usko-Ayar school. Pablo left us this November 2009, and this interview is posted in homage to this great Artist and great Man.

Interview
Howard Charing
15 min
ii

Anadenanthera

By Neil Logan December 1999 Plants containing entheogenic tryptamines are known around the world and are represented in nearly every Family. These plants commonly have an abundance of folk and medicinal history…

Essay
Neil Logan
20 min
iii

Body Signs : Body Decoration and Sensory Symbolism in South America

By : David Howes Sociology and Anthropology Concordia University Montreal . Quebec CANADA H3G 1M8 Westerners are accustomed to seeing photographs of native South Americans with elaborately painted bodies or with lips…

Essay
David Howes
15 min
iv

Cybernetics & Entheogenics

Peter Lamborn Wilson From Cyberspace to Neurospace 1996 The term “Neurospace” I learned from the Kiev artist Vladimir Muzehesky, through Geert Lovink. What I immediately thought he meant by it was a…

Peter Lamborn Wilson
25 min
v

Ritual

By : The Bricoleur Ritual can be described in various ways. Here are the most accurate descriptions I can think of: Mircea Eliade, a pioneer in the study of religion and spirituality,…

Essay
The Bricoleur
18 min
vi

Shamanism Versus Capitalism

By Martin A. Lee Wander long enough through the bustling passageways of any crowded village marketplace in the northwest Amazon river basin and youll come upon herbalist stands with dried plants, hanging…

Martin A. Lee
10 min
Plate of the issue · Deep view

The Visionary Pharmakon

Drag to move · hold and scroll to magnify
The Visionary Pharmakon
This issue

Contributors