“There is a coming home. A home base. Psychedelics help you reconnect with home.”
— Ann Shulgin
“After centuries of patriarchal dominance, humanity has lost its innate balance. By invoking the divine feminine energies we restore equilibrium. That’s why we chose the word Divas — the Latin for goddesses or the feminine divine — to honor the highest aspect of the feminine.”
–from Psychedelic Divas website
“I want to unfold. Let no place in me hold itself closed, for where I am closed, I am false.“
–Rainer Maria Rilke
It’s been noted that the discovery of LSD in 1943 by the Swiss chemist, Albert Hoffman, occurred while scientists at the Manhattan Project were developing the first atom bomb, detonated in 1945. The most powerful agent of consciousness change and the most destructive weapon mankind had ever created came to us very close in time. Is it a coincidence, or synchronicity. A similar synchronicity seems apparent in the present moment, where a wide range of intersecting destructive trends, possibly crippling or fatal to humanity and other life on Earth – the mega, meta, or polycrisis – is happening at the same time as what has been called the psychedelic renaissance.
Can psychedelics help humanity develop a more eco-conscious mindset and find the motivation and wisdom to create a just and sustainable world? It seems clear that psychedelics alone do not accomplish that. But combined with appropriate intention, proper preparation, and mindful integration, there are signs that they do support and accelerate the transformation of people’s perception, thinking and activity towards more cooperation and empathy and greater appreciation and respect for nature.
One of the oldest and key features of the old paradigm is male domination, patriarchy. It’s fair to ask whether this way of being itself is a primary cause of our crises, subjugating the nurturing, holding and being qualities of the feminine and women, to the assertive, active, goal-oriented male energies, and men.
As we try to emerge from millennia of patriarchy, we can draw from the many wisdom and spiritual traditions of the world which contain teachings that can help free of us from the mindsets of male dominance. We can learn that giving attention to the Divine Feminine, the Goddess and Goddesses of old, and to Nature and Mother Earth is essential for both men and women. We can face the deeply ingrained destructive bias that places male attributes and energy, and men, above and more important than the feminine and women.
There are many ways to unlearn the conditioned patterns of male dominance and expand our consciousness to embrace the fuller realizations of the feminine. One way is the carefully guided, ceremonial use of plant medicines, entheogens, psychedelics. On such journeys, it’s possible to heal the wounded aspects of one’s inner woman (what Carl Jung called the anima) and open to the divine feminine available to both men and women. Carla Detchon has been exploring this for nearly forty years and recently launched “Psychedelic Divas”, a podcast devoted to this subject. I interviewed Carla for my Crossing the Boundary podcast. I hope you can take the time to listen to our conversation.
Carla and I were in ceremonial spaces together many times with the masterful guide, Ralph Metzner. Metzner’s approach to psychedelic ceremonies included what he called “divinations,” purposeful inner journeys for opening to divine guidance and healing. He would take us through mythic realms and lead us through spiritual practices, some of which aimed to heal wounded parts of ourselves and explore our relationship to the physical, psychological and spiritual aspects of male and female consciousness.
Through her work as an integrative coach and through her podcast series, Carla supports people in the preparation and integration of psychedelic journeys. She is passing along the legacy of Metzner’s wisdom teachings. Her emphasis, as the podcast name makes clear, is on the feminine. While ultimately, we all need to balance the male/female within, the long suppression of the feminine in humanity calls for us to highlight that aspect of our nature. We need an affirmative action focus of our attention on HER for our personal benefit, and for the much needed transformation of the collective human consciousness.
As it says on the Psychedelic Divas website:
“We are calling on people of all genders to lean into their natural divine feminine traits—intuition, receptivity, creativity, compassion, healing, communal connection, softness, nurturing, and flow—in order to help bring balance back to our individual selves as well as the world.“
I invite you to listen or watch my conversation with Carla and check out her podcast series: https://psychedelicdivas.com/podcast/
At a very practical level, Carla offers a free guide on her website and podcast site called:
“PSYCHEDELIC SAFETY TIPS INCLUDING WHAT TO DO WHEN THINGS GO WRONG”
You can learn more about Carla at Psychedelic Divas
Or learn about her integration coaching practice
And be sure to check out more Crossing the Boundary conversations at:
Youtube: tinyurl.com/msmmh6sn
Podcast: https://crossingboundarieswithalanlevin.buzzsprout.com