So you've been cursed
Beliefs in and experiences of sorcery / black magic are quite common among psychedelic users
Most of you who have more than a passing familiarity with Amazon shamanism or other forms of shamanism will know it is not all love and light or healing, white magic. There is a dark side: brujeria, sorcery, cursing, black magic, which aims not to heal someone in accordance with their wishes, but to harm or exploit them in accordance with the wishes of the shaman or their client. The shaman, in Amazon tribal cultures, is a morally-ambiguous, dangerous and even predatory figure, because if they can magically heal you, perhaps they can magically harm you as well.
To what extent do people who take psychedelic drugs from North America or Europe believe in things like curses, black magic and sorcery? Did taking psychedelics make them more inclined to believe in magic? Do they believe they’ve ever experienced sorcery, and if so, in what way? From who? How did they cope with that? If they think shamans or facilitators could magically harm them, might that make them less likely to speak out publicly against them?
A group of researchers and I sought to find answers to these questions, which I don’t think have been looked into empirically before. The team included Professor David Luke of Greenwich University; Kim van Oorsouw, assistant professor at Maastricht; Maja Kohek of ICEERS; Christian Jurlando of the Stevens Institute of Technology; and myself and Marta Majer from the Challenging Psychedelic Experiences Project.
I just uploaded the preprint (it hasn’t quite been published yet but as soon as it is I’ll put it in the comments) and submitted it to a journal. We sent out a survey to users of psychedelics, and got 895 responses. Respondents were predominantly from the United States (50%), followed by the United Kingdom (13%), Canada (5%), Israel and Germany (3% each), and France and Brazil (2% each). Regarding religious or spiritual orientation, 47% identified as spiritual but not religious, 7% as Buddhist, 7% as Christian, 6% as shamanic, and 5% as Jewish. In terms of education, 41% held a master’s degree, 26% a bachelor’s degree, and 19% a doctorate or professorship.
The majority (85%) reported personal recreational or exploratory use of psychedelics, 60% had participated in a ceremony or retreat, 24% identified as psychedelic guides, 22% as psychedelic-assisted therapists or clinicians, 18% as researchers, academics, or students, and 9% as psychedelic church members. The most common setting for psychedelic use was private or social (71%), followed by ceremony with a western guide or neoshaman (38%), ceremony with an indigenous shaman (21%), festival or nightclub (20%), and clinical settings (6%). Participants were also asked whether they were currently or had previously been a member of an ayahuasca church, group, family, or regular ceremonial circle. Of those responding, 112 (14%) indicated ayahuasca group membership and 721 (86%) did not.
Headline findings
We defined black magic as ‘experiences of harm or attempted harm, or coercion, through non-materialist processes such as through energy, spells, love magic, spiritual attack, magic darts, spirit-allies, curses, hexing, sorcery or “brujeria.”’ Following that definition, 12% of psychedelic users in our survey reported personal experiences of black magic, and 6% reported knowing someone else affected by it, so in total almost one fifth of respondents reported either direct or indirect experience of black magic in psychedelic culture.
As expected, the figure is higher among those who say they regularly use ayahuasca and are part of ayahuasca groups - 33% of them say they have experienced black magic, which suggests belief in and experience of sorcery is widespread among western ayahuasca users.
Of the 108 respondents who said that they or someone they know had experienced black magic in connection with psychedelics, 53 gave more information about the experience. In 66% of those cases, the curse was perceived to have originated from a guide or ceremonial leader. The most common symptoms were a feeling of negative energy, fear and anxiety, loss of autonomy and mental confusion.
It has already been recognized that psychedelics can trigger shifts in metaphysical belief, making people more open to spiritual or non-physicalist frameworks. This study finds psychedelic experiences make users more inclined to believe in supernatural healing (65% said they felt some belief in it prior to having tried psychedelics compared to 80% after having tried psychedelics), but also, to a lesser extent, in the possibility of supernatural harm (65% prior, 75% after). What caused this shift in belief? It’s not clear - 48% attributed an increased belief in sorcery to their psychedelic experiences, while, independently, 36% attributed an increased belief to the influence of psychedelic culture.
According to this survey, with a demographic predominantly from North America and Europe, around 52% of psychedelic users believe in black magic, which is significantly higher than the roughly 25-30% of Americans or Europeans who say they believe in curses in previous surveys. The prevalence of beliefs in curses in psychedelic culture is closer to the levels found in East Asia and Latin America. This is surprising considering the high level of education in the sample, with over 60% reporting a Master’s degree or higher.
The survey indicates some of the complicated power dynamics at work in psychedelic ceremonial encounters. On the one hand, 46% of respondents, and 75% of people who regularly attend ayahuasca groups, say they have felt ‘awe at the spiritual or healing power of the facilitator’. In addition, 43% of respondents felt on at least one occasion that the shaman or facilitator possessed supernatural powers such as telepathy, the ability to call in or exorcise spirits, or the ability to heal at a distance - this rose to a remarkable 79% among ayahuasca group members. But spiritual power is a double-edged sword - if the facilitator or shaman can heal you supernaturally, the implication often follows that they can harm you supernaturally as well.
43% of respondents felt on at least one occasion that the shaman or facilitator possessed supernatural powers such as telepathy, the ability to call in or exorcise spirits, or the ability to heal at a distance - this rose to a remarkable 79% among ayahuasca group members.
This double-edged awe / fear of facilitators’ or shamans’ supernatural powers can have social consequences within psychedelic circles - a fear of speaking out against harms and abuses. In this newsletter I’ve sometimes interviewed people who experienced harm at the hands of shamans and guides, sometimes within the context of cult-like groups, but who were reluctant to speak out publicly for fear of magical retaliation, or who spoke out publicly and subsequently felt spiritually attacked.
In the survey, 19% of respondents said speaking out against a ceremonial leader invites magical retaliation, and 11% said they would be less likely to speak out publicly against a shaman or facilitator for fear of magical retaliation. This fits with the findings of cult studies and with victims’ and survivors’ stories from high-control cult-like psychedelic groups, in which abusive and controlling gurus or cult-leaders use supernatural threats to maintain obedience and discourage criticism.
As psychedelics go mainstream, get FDA approval, and more and more people try them, it will be interesting to see if more people start believing in things like curses and black magic, or not. In any case, it’s worth acknowledging, discussing and researching this aspect of psychedelic culture. Not everything in the re-enchantment of society is love and light.
After the paywall, I’ll share some of the accounts I’ve come across where people felt cursed or magically attacked, or who didn’t speak out for fear of magical attack, including a contribution from Erica Siegal, who used to run the Shine Collective, an NGO which supported victims of psychedelic abuse.
