High-Net-Worth spirituality and elite shamanification

On the nexus of wealth, hedonism and psychedelic / New Age spirituality

It’s curious how the psychedelic renaissance has attracted and been funded by some of the richest people in the world, both billionaire tech founders and millionaire heirs like the Gettys, the Mellons and the Rockefellers. But the overlap between high net-worth and bohemian spirituality goes back beyond that, for a century or more, and can also be found in the British landed gentry. Today I want to dive into this nexus of wealth, hedonism and spirituality, its paradoxes, peculiarities, potentials and perils.

I should start by acknowledging my own positionality in this. I’m not from a wealthy family but my parents worked hard, saved up, and sent my brother and I to a famous English boarding school, Eton College, where we grew up among the wealthy. There were members of the English landed gentry with their beautiful country houses; there were the new rich, and increasingly the new global rich - English boarding schools are now, I hear, 30% the children of Russian, Chinese and other BRIC oligarchs. And there were middle-class kids like me.

When I was at Eton, 1990-1995, an epidemic of psychedelic drugs swept through the school like a medieval dancing plague. Some of us - only ever a bohemian minority - got very into MDMA, LSD, mushrooms and amphetamine and went to places like Whirligig, Megatripolis and Club UK. For some it was pure hedonism, but for others, including me, it was part of an embrace of the psychedelic-spiritual worldview pioneered by Aldous Huxley, who’d been a pupil and teacher at the school (before our time, obviously).

Like for Aldous, psychedelics and ecstatic experiences were perhaps a way to try and escape our upper-middle-class English reserve and feel something authentic. We were, like Aldous, emotionally-repressed people seeking ecstasy and healing.

This experimental culture carried on after we left school. Some became ‘trustafarians’ and travelled to India or Peru, to trance raves or yogic ashrams or ayahuasca ceremonies. Most had a great time and were none the worse of it. Perhaps they found healing and a spirituality that has enriched their lives. But, inevitably, wealthy teenagers taking a lot of drugs also led to some harm.

Friends of mine got addicted to hard drugs and died of overdoses, or lost their minds on cannabis or psychedelics, or ended up in New Age cults for years. One or two even went to jail for dealing. Last month, one particularly hardcore member of the public school rave scene - Dave Lycett Green, the grandson of John Betjeman - died after many decades of mental illness. He’d been sectioned at least 47 times for a psychosis which was initially triggered by heavy use of amphetamine and other drugs. It’s an old story - rich people going off the rails on drugs. I myself developed mental health problems throughout university after a bad LSD trip, which it took me years to recover from. That’s why I still care so much about psychedelic safety and set up CPEP. It’s not just that I harmed myself, it’s that I saw so many other people get hurt, including close friends.

Psychedelic heirs

Why do so many wealthy people get drawn to bohemian hedonism and spirituality? Why is psychedelic culture so shaped by high-net-worth individuals? When is this good for them and their culture, and when is it bad for them and their culture?

It’s one of the weird things one notices about the psychedelic renaissance - the out-sized role played by a handful of very wealthy people, often associated with the Psychedelic Science Funders Collaborative. They have funded a lot of the research, the advocacy, the arts, the retreat centres and underground ceremonies. They attend Burning Man and that’s where you go to schmooze if you want to find funding for your psychedelic research programme or start-up.

There are the tech founders and VCs like Elon Musk or his friend Antonio Gracias, a major psychedelic philanthropist currently bidding to take over Lykos. And then there are the psychedelic heirs to great fortunes - the Gettys, Rockefellers, Marses, Seagrams, Swifts, Mellons, Bronners, Kochs and so on. One sees a similar attraction to psychedelic culture among the English landed gentry - Lady Amanda Fielding, friends of EI Josh Dugdale and Anton Bilton, even Prince Harry. At least one big English country house now has its own medicine ceremony chapel, just as at least one HNW entrepreneur in the US has set up his own psychedelic church on his ranch.

What explains this nexus of wealth and New Age healing / party culture?

The simplest explanation is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. People satisfy their material needs, reach a point where they can buy anything they want, and discover they’re still not satisfied or content. They discover they have higher needs - the need for meaning and self-transcendence - so they look to spirituality and figures like Aldous Huxley to satisfy these higher needs.

There’s a well-known aspect of entrepreneur culture - the post-exit existential crisis. Founders slave away seven days a week building their start-up, then they sell it and think ‘who the hell am I, without my company? Why aren’t I happy?’ Or maybe they are still grinding away, but they are constantly thinking ‘how can I optimize myself more?’ And within Silicon Valley culture they see everyone else going on Hoffman retreats or jhana retreats or ayahuasca retreats, they hear Tim Ferriss say that every billionaire he knows has tried psychedelics, and they think, maybe that’s what I need to find healing / personal growth / self-optimization.

And because they’re type A strivers and ultra-competitive, they bring the grind mindset to spirituality and it becomes a form of competitive ego-death. ‘I’m not just going to meditate a bit, I’m going to go on a two-month meditation retreat with the best Tibetan lama in a cave. I’m going to out-meditate Sam Harris. I’m going to achieve the jhanas in a week. I’m not just going to try psychedelics. I’m going to try every psychedelic in existence in a year, then I’m going to bank-roll the best possible psychedelic retreat, then I’m going to bring psychedelic healing to the world, roll it out like the new SoulCycle’.

It’s easy to poke fun, but some entrepreneurs will find genuine healing and meaning along the way, like this guy. But others will get lost, like the Zappos founder Tony Hsieh, or like the apocryphal founder who gets ‘one-shotted’ by ayahuasca.

And then there are the heirs. They grew up in very wealthy families, which are sometimes emotionally dysfunctional in a Roy family sort of way, so maybe they need healing for trauma or addiction and end up looking to alternative therapies like psychedelics. Or maybe they just want to know who they are, besides the heir of someone else’s fortune. I interviewed Jessica McGawley, who set up a company called Dallington Associates which offers guidance and coaching to wealthy families on heirs’ development. Jess tells me:

One often sees heirs searching for meaning and identity. This isn’t as common in the first-generation wealth creators (or at least until later in life) because they tend to be more focused on building their legacy. For those who inherit wealth, there can be a strong sense of being defined by the family legacy, being known as "John’s son" or "Sarah’s daughter”. Everything you do – from the university place or job you have – is seen as being a direct result of who you are related to, which can remove ownership from your identity and achievements. It leads some to think ‘what else is out there’ And some look in a spiritual way, which I think is a positive thing.

There’s even a book and course to help heirs who feel in the shadow of their wealthy father, called ‘the quest for legitimacy’:

It’s kind of the Kendall Roy Syndrome (you just know if there was ever a season 4 of Succession, Kendall would go to an iboga centre in Mexico).

HNW spirituality and philanthropy

The wealthy search for post-materialist meaning leads to the nexus of wealth, hedonism, culture and spirituality. This nexus is not all bad by any means - it leads to patronage and funding for the arts, ideas, great parties, religious and spiritual movements, and charitable endeavours. Christianity went from a fringe alternative belief system to a world civilization when the Roman rich adopted it. But sometimes it can be dangerous when elite radical bohemianism gets shoe-horned too rapidly into mass culture. Maybe that’s what happened with wokeness - wealthy white guilt got weaponized. And it could be what happens with psychedelics. I hope not and will come back to how to avoid this.

To think about this nexus, we need to put it into historical perspective. Thanks to the recommendation of Brian Klass, I have been reading a book called As Gods Among Men: The Rich in Western Culture, by Italian historian Guide Alfani. He traces how, throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era, the super-rich have been seen as potentially a problem or vice. One medieval humanist, Nicole Oresme, declared in 1370:

The super-rich [superabundantes] are so unequal and exceed and overcome the others regarding their political power so much that it is reasonable to think that they are among the others as God is among men.… The cities which are governed democratically, should relegate these people, i.e. they should send them into exile or banish them, as such cities try and pursue equality of all.

Is wealth a sin? Are the rich a threat to public morality? Although Jesus said it’s easier for a camel to walk through a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven and we should all abandon our belongings and become spiritual nomads, obviously the Church rapidly came to a social contract with the rich and powerful:

‘You give us money and we will give you legitimacy, satisfy your spiritual yearnings and desire for the one thing you can’t buy - immortality. Help us build this cathedral or that monastery or this hospital or school or university, and we will pray for your souls so you get speedy boarding through purgatory’. That was basically the deal that helped build European civilization, including such venerable institutions as Eton College (set up so poor students could pray for the soul of its founder, Henry VI).

This contract could be corrupted - as Luther pointed out, though of course Protestantism also had its wealthy patrons - but it helped build Christian civilization, connected the wealthy to the body of Christ and fostered the idea we are all One and hence the rich should take care of the poor.

Then from the renaissance until the present day, that Christian principle declined somewhat, and a new more secular idea emerged, philanthropy, based on the principle that the rich will be accepted into the city-state as long as they support it with good works. The prime example is the Medici banking family and their financing of the Italian renaissance, or the French aristocracy and their bank-rolling of the Enlightenment, or the English landed gentry and their bank-rolling of the arts - Turner goes to stay at Petworth and gets his own room, in return for creating beauty, John Locke gets paid to tutor the Earl of Shaftesbury and in return gets bank-rolled for his liberal ideas. The rich bankrolled all sorts of cultural movements, both reactionary and revolutionary, including New Age spirituality in the early 20th century - Theosophy, for example, was spread through elite networks and country houses like Tyringham Hall, owned by the theosophist Frederick Konig banker, later bought by real estate investor Anton Bilton and used as a site for DMT seminars.

Philanthropy became formalized in the early 20th century through the rise of family offices like the House of Morgan and philanthropic foundations like the Rockefeller Foundation.

The single family office manages a wealthy family’s wealth and investments, maybe helps them minimize their taxes and manage inheritances, and also takes care of the elite’s health, education, security, various homes, philanthropy, leisure activities, and even their quest for culture and meaning and spiritual capital. Today there are something like 8000 family offices managing around $3 trillion worldwide - it’s a whole ecosystem of financiers, lawyers, bodyguards, lifestyle concierges, chefs, tutors, tennis coaches, yoga teachers, therapists, gurus and so on.

US wealthy families give a huge amount to philanthropy - roughly $500 billion a year - and get tax breaks in return. This munificence gives them legitimacy and acceptance in social democracies, and helped build American civilization - the Carnegies, Mellons, Rockefellers and Morgans and others founded universities, hospitals and cultural institutions like the Met Museum, the Met Opera, Carnegie Hall and the University of Chicago.

But philanthropy was only ever a small fraction of total high-net-worth spending. Most of it went on wealth preservation, luxury and leisure - mansions in New York or the Hamptons, islands in the Caribbean, super-yachts, skiing chalets etc. Or it got distributed to the luxury economy of fashion, restaurants, high-end holidays and big parties.

There was and is an economy of wealth, hedonism, beauty and sex - this week I also read a book called Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit, by model-turned-sociologist Ashley Mears (thanks to Jamie Wheal for the recommendation).

Ashley researched and worked in the VIP circuit of luxury clubs and holidays, observing the nexus between High Net-Worth men (known as ‘whales’), promoters, models and venues. The whales want female beauty for the status it confers and the possibility of sex, the models want access to elite networks for money, career possibilities and the possibility of a wealthy lover or husband; the venues want the VIP crowd at their night-club or resort for their status and wealth; and in the middle of it all is the promoter, who liaises between the models, the venues and the whales. The promoter is a nebulous figure in elite networks - not rich themselves but dreaming of becoming it, but who enjoys a sort of capital through their role in the VIP ecosystem. The party guy.

Ashley even mapped out the economy of the VIP club.

Obviously this VIP sex economy can get a bit Epstein / P Diddy - it can get into the realm of zero-sum exploitation in one way or another. But Ashley argues it can also be symbiotic and contractual - all parties can get what they want without feeling harmed.

The NYC promoter becomes the SF shaman bro

This VIP economy has vibe-shifted in the last two decades, as the East Coast got over-taken by the West Coast and Silicon Valley in wealth, and tech bros became the richest people on Earth. The West Coast has a different vibe - less Met galas and Studio 54, more Esalen and Burning Man. This led to the rise of the ‘shaman bro’, as chronicled in this excellent blog-post by Asleep Thinking (thanks again to Jamie Wheal for the link). AT writes that the East Coast party-economy took a hit after the 2008 financial crisis, and the Promotor Bro could no longer rely on Wall Street types for their spending.

So the Promoter Bro spent some years in the pejorative desert – where he attended a festival called Burning Man. There he dropped acid and communed with dead spirits of an ancient Mesoamerican civilization and discovered that he wasn’t just a glorified pimp hustler without a real job or career prospects but was actually instead a tribal mystic of some sort endowing the world with community.

When the world collapsed with Covid and everyone adopted the amorphous life style – one that the Promoter Bro now reincarnated as a Shaman Bro had thrived in for years – he all the sudden found himself the king bro. His world of grifting and not really working had now become everyone’s world.

You’re a Tech Bro who wants to go work in Tulum for a month – well you need the Shaman Bro to help you with that. You’re a Finance Bro who wants to know where the underground party in Tribeca is – well Shaman Bro will tell you. You’re a hot Estonian model who wants to heal her chakra energy - well Shaman bro is happy to pour oil over your naked body while you take his molly (he’ll insist that to be fully healed you must commune with him physically).

The rise of Silicon Valley wealth led to the rise of the psychedelic concierge and HNY shaman. I had a brief dip into that world in 2018, when I visited San Francisco and attended Burning Man. In one week, I met my first ‘corporate shaman’ - a young woman who consulted the spirits to provide her HNW clients with business insights - and then spent a week at Burning Man surrounded by Thielians who enjoyed the patronage of Peter Thiel for their various projects, from Seasteading to immortality. At that Burning Man I heard Jamie Wheal talk to a packed tent about ecstatic experiences. He’s a friend now, and tells me what he’s observed in the nexus between tech wealth and psychedelic culture. He says:

In a simplistic way, people pursue money or meaning as a primary path, and the people who pursue meaning tend not to have a lot of money, and the people who pursue money tend not to have a lot of meaning. So there’s a deficit, and then the broke-ass spiritual-meaning folks are like ‘I will flog you some meaning, you fat-walleted whale, and you will give me some of your money. So there’s an ecosystem of a high-net-worth whales and all the smaller fish around them.

The shaman who caters to the VIP crowd could be an indigenous healer - a Colombian taita or Shipibo shaman or Mexican Huichol who has in the last two decades found themselves going from dirt-poor to suddenly flying around the world doing ceremonies for the richest people on Earth who, he discovers, have no end of ancestral trauma. Or it could be a westerner claiming to be indigenous or initiated into an indigenous tradition or just tapped straight into the source through Bufo. The shaman bro is to the tech rich what Mr Collins was to Lady Catherine De Bourgh in Pride and Prejudice - spiritual advisor to a wealthy family.

You now have millionaire shamans holding ceremonies for the HNW crowd. The NYC VIP club economy has been replaced by the HNW medicine ceremony.

A similar thing is happening in the UK, where I guess indigenous shamanism appeals to the English landed gentry with its emphasis on sacred land and honouring your ancestor-spirits - call it shamanic conservatism.

HNW spirituality can be productive and symbiotic, like the Medici’s support for Neo-Platonic magic in the Renaissance. One industry observer recalls attending Psychedelic Science 2023 and feeling like ‘it was like the Medici, with various philanthropists hiring private rooms for meetings and going from meeting to party planning the future of psychedelic industry and culture’.

This can lead to patronage for research, trials, retreat centres, or New Age arts and culture. An example of someone who has benefitted from these VIP networks would be Brian Muraresku, the author of The Immortality Key, which argued that most if not all religions were psychedelic-inspired. His book was turned into a big art installation at Burning Man 2023, funded by the Jurvetsons and Christiana Musk. The Cohen Foundation donated $200,000 to turn the book into a documentary. And he seems to have been involved in Christiana Musk and Antonio Gracias’ donations to UC Berkeley and Harvard for grants for psychedelic humanities. Here’s a video about the Burning Man installation:

But the economy of HNW spirituality also risks becoming non-symbiotic or exploitative in some ways. It attracts an awful lot of grifters, high on charisma and low on ethics and expertise.

More after the paywall.