Autonomous entities
Also: beings · presences · entity contact · the others · deities · cosmic intelligence
Within traditions: madre, dueño, doctor · yoshin, ibo · niños santos · Vernacular: machine elves
The experience of meeting a being that appears to act, perceive and communicate independently of the person having the experience.
Pharmakon is agnostic about what these beings are. It treats Indigenous knowledge, first-person phenomenology, parapsychology, informational realism and neuroscience as serious frameworks, each with its own standards of evidence. Grades on this page apply to claims about what people report, measure and practise. They are never verdicts on whether the beings exist.
- Inhaled and injected DMT
- Brugmansia as delirium
- Ayahuasca
- Iboga and ibogaine
- Anadenanthera and Virola snuffs
- Salvia divinorum
- Psilocybin mushrooms
- Caapi alone
- Shanon (2002): beings within scenes and immersive worlds
- 11-factor ASC: partly complex imagery; agency not measured
- No dedicated validated instrument
- Immersive scenes usual setting
- Noesis messages felt as revealed
- Sensed presence distinct
- Ego dissolution at the limit
- Unitive experience at cosmic scale
01Definition and boundaries
The defining feature is agency. Reports describe a being that acts on its own initiative, appears to perceive the person, communicates, and resists the person's attempts to direct it. In a corpus of 1,719 inhaled-DMT encounters, the entity was coded as initiating the interaction in 97.8% of cases (Lawrence et al., 2022). Where a figure appears but does nothing, Shanon classes it among independent images; this entry excludes it (Shanon, 2002).
Several neighbouring experiences share some features and differ on others. A sensed presence is felt nearby without being seen or engaged. Electrical stimulation of the left temporoparietal junction produced the feeling of a shadowy person behind a patient, mimicking her posture (Arzy et al., 2006). During sleep paralysis, a felt and often threatening intruder is among the most commonly reported hallucinations (Cheyne, Rueffer and Newby-Clark, 1999). Every framework in section 07 has to say how these relate to psychedelic encounters. Neuroscience reads them as the same generative machinery at work; folklore and parapsychology have long treated night visitors and presences as encounters in their own right.
Deliriant plants raise a third boundary. Under tropane-bearing Brugmansia, people converse with fully formed figures, often without recognising them as hallucinations and with little memory afterwards; in one series of 33 patients, 88% were delirious (Isbister et al., 2003). These figures act and speak, so they meet the definition of agency. They differ in how they are given: they appear as ordinary people in ordinary space, and the encounter is not experienced as entering another world.
At the other limit, the distinction between self and being can collapse. Only 2.8% of coded DMT encounters described feeling completely identical with the entity (Lawrence et al., 2022). Merger shades into ego dissolution and is treated there.
02Anatomy of an encounter
The quantitative literature allows encounters to be broken into components. Almost all of it concerns inhaled DMT, where three independent datasets now exist: a survey of 2,561 people describing their most memorable encounter, a corpus of 3,778 forum reports, and 36 interviews conducted immediately after use in a naturalistic field study.
Reports describing any entity encounter (Lawrence et al., 2022). In the field study, 94% of the 36 post-session interviews did so, and 100% described emerging into other worlds (Michael, Luke and Robinson, 2021).
Entity sensed visually (Lawrence et al., 2022). The remainder were felt or heard without a visible form.
Communication occurred, usually without speech (Lawrence et al., 2022). In the survey, 69% reported receiving a message and 19% a prediction about the future (Davis et al., 2020).
Rated the entity conscious, and 96% intelligent (Davis et al., 2020). In the forum corpus: conscious 93.2%, intelligent 72.0% (Lawrence et al., 2022).
Entity described as existing at least partly in another dimension (Lawrence et al., 2022).
Rated the entity benevolent, yet 41% felt fear during the encounter (Davis et al., 2020). Both can be true of one encounter.
Forms and roles
Lawrence et al. (2022) · percentage of 1,719 coded inhaled-DMT encounters. Categories overlap; a single encounter can fall under several.
03The range of beings
Popular accounts dwell on elves. The reports range far more widely, from beings smaller than the person to intelligences the size of a planet or a universe. Scale is a second axis of the encounter, alongside the degree of participation set out in section 04.
| Scale | Beings reported | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Miniature and trickster | Elves, imps, jesters, clowns, sprites | Jester or clown 6.5%, machine elves 2.9%, faerie or sprite 1.2% of coded DMT encounters (Lawrence et al., 2022); faeries or elves 59 mentions (Hanna, 2012). |
| Animal and hybrid | Serpents, jaguars, insectoid, reptilian and tentacled beings, therianthropes | Creature or animal 9.2% (Lawrence et al., 2022); serpents and felines throughout Amazonian accounts (Shanon, 2002; Langdon, 1979). |
| Ancestral and the dead | Ancestors, deceased relatives, ghosts | Central in Bwiti and ibogaine accounts (Fernandez, 1982; Kohek et al., 2020); ghosts or deceased 93 mentions (Hanna, 2012). |
| Plant persons and owners | Plant mothers, owners, doctors; Mother Ayahuasca; María Pastora | Vegetalista and Mazatec practice (Luna, 1984; Valdés, Díaz and Paul, 1983). "Mother Ayahuasca" is a recent global form that foregrounds maternal benevolence (Peluso, 2014). |
| Divine and devotional | Goddesses and feminine presences, God, angels, Christ and Mary, Buddhist and Hindu deities, Egyptian gods, the Queen of the Forest | Feminine presences appear in 24.2% of coded DMT encounters and deities or divine beings in 17.0%, including goddesses 2.5%, "God" 2.8%, Hindu 2.3% and Buddhist 2.2% deities, and angels 1.0% (Lawrence et al., 2022). Gods 104 and angels 52 mentions (Hanna, 2012). Santo Daime hymns are received from the Queen of the Forest and beings of a Christian-esoteric cosmos (Labate, Rose and Santos, 2009). |
| Celestial and luminous | Aliens, beings of light or energy, jewelled beings, geometric and hyperdimensional beings | Alien or celestial 16.3%, beings of light 4.2%, geometric or hyperdimensional 3.5% (Lawrence et al., 2022). |
| Planetary | Gaia, Mother Earth, Mother Nature; sentience in plants, rocks and ecosystems | Gaia, Mother Ayahuasca or Mother Nature 2.0% of coded encounters (Lawrence et al., 2022). In a survey of 272 psychedelic users, 18 described nature as conscious and communication with plants and rocks as possible (Irvine et al., 2023). |
| Cosmic | The intelligence of the universe; a unified field of consciousness; galaxies and stars as living | Over 73 high-dose LSD sessions across twenty years, Bache describes meeting "the living intelligence of our universe", experienced as a unified field of consciousness with "fierce love and creative intent" (Bache, 2019). Grof's cartography includes identification with mythic figures, visits to archetypal realms and union with the cosmic creative principle (Grof, 1975). |
At the largest scales the language of "entity" strains. Bache describes a field more than a figure: an intelligence that is other and yet includes the person meeting it. Encounters at this scale shade into unitive and mystical experience, and into the degree of merger in section 04.
Recurring forms across three decades
The most debated finding in this literature is that the same kinds of being keep appearing. Elves and imps, insect-like and reptilian beings, many-armed or tentacled creatures, and jesters or tricksters appear in Meyer's accounts from around 1991, in Luke's 2011 review, in an Erowid survey of 2012 and in the 2022 forum corpus (Meyer, 1993; Luke, 2011; Hanna, 2012; Lawrence et al., 2022).
What the recurrence means is contested. Luke argues that independent, naive participants converging on a small number of types is a datum any theory must explain, and he connects it to older folklore of fairies and tricksters (Luke, 2011). Meyer had drawn the same parallel with Evans-Wentz's study of the fairy faith (Meyer, 1993). Against this, the reports are not independent in any strict sense. McKenna's "machine elves" circulated widely from the 1980s, and later users arrive with these images already in mind.
| Corpus | Sample | Recurring forms reported |
|---|---|---|
| Meyer (1993) written c. 1991 | 15 accounts from six people | Elves; small, old-looking imps; dark stick-like beings; a many-armed, octopus-like creature. Beings pass objects, joke, hide and wave goodbye. |
| Luke (2011) | Review of published reports | Mischievous shapeshifting beings, insect-like figures, reptilian beings. |
| Hanna (2012) | Erowid open-ended survey, counts of mentions | Aliens (105), gods (104), ghosts or deceased (93), faeries or elves (59), angels (52), demons (41), reptiles (25), insects (15), cephalopods (11), jesters (9). |
| Lawrence et al. (2022) | 1,719 coded encounters | Jester or clown 6.5%, reptilian 3.0%, machine elves 2.9%, tentacled 2.4%, insectoid 2.3%. |
04Degrees of presence
Meyer described three levels of the DMT experience: an energy flow before any imagery, geometric patterns, then, after a tunnel or breakthrough, a space of three or more dimensions where beings are met (Meyer, 1993). His levels describe the approach to the encounter. The scale below describes the encounter itself, ordered by how fully the other takes part, using Shanon's distinction between images, scenes and immersive worlds. Intensity is a poor guide here: a faint being that speaks is more fully an entity than a vivid face that does nothing.
05Across preparations
Generated from the phenomenological profiles on plant and complex pages, and updated when those pages are regraded. Entity encounters occur across very different pharmacologies: serotonergic tryptamines, the kappa-opioid agonist salvinorin A, the multi-target alkaloid ibogaine, and the anticholinergic tropanes of Brugmansia. That spread matters to every framework in section 07, since no single receptor mechanism accounts for it.
| Preparation | Grade | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Inhaled and injected DMT Psychonautic DMT complex | Established | Four independent methods: clinical administration (Strassman, 2001), a large survey (Davis et al., 2020), a report corpus (Lawrence et al., 2022) and a naturalistic field study (Michael, Luke and Robinson, 2021). Placebo-controlled DMT also reproduces features of near-death experiences, a literature in which meeting beings is a recurring theme (Timmermann et al., 2018). |
| Ayahuasca B. caapi · Ayahuasca complex | Supported | Recurrent in Shanon's corpus of 178 drinkers and in ethnographies of plant persons and owners (Shanon, 2002; Luna, 1984; Langdon, 1979). No controlled trial measures entities directly. |
| Iboga and ibogaine T. iboga · Bwiti complex | Supported | In Bwiti, initiates meet the ancestors during a trance that in principle lasts three days (Fernandez, 1982; Nyongo Ndoua and Vaghar, 2018). Visions are tested through questioning, divination and later events: seeing an image is not yet a diagnosis (Bonhomme, 2005). Twenty ibogaine users described faces, ancestors, deceased relatives and luminous beings, with narrative rather than geometric imagery (Kohek et al., 2020). Encounters here centre on the dead and on kin. |
| Anadenanthera and Virola snuffs Circum-Amazonian snuff complex | Supported | Piaroa specialists use yopo to inspect illness and locate hostile agency, and initiates receive songs from the primordial figure Tseheru (Rodd, 2003). Taíno caciques and behiques used cohoba to question and speak with zemís (Pané, 1999; Oliver, 2009). Yanomami shamans bring down the xapiri with Virola snuff (Kopenawa and Albert, 2013). Self-experiments with bufotenine report visual effects but no entities, and differ from yopo in route, purity and setting (Ott, 2001). |
| Salvia divinorum S. divinorum · Mazatec complex | Supported | In Mazatec practice the plant is María Pastora, the Shepherdess, addressed as a presence that speaks, reveals and guides, among saints and the Virgin (Wasson, 1962; Valdés, Díaz and Paul, 1983; Díaz, 2013); a Mazatec saying holds that she speaks with a quiet voice (Reisfield, 1993). Controlled studies of salvinorin A are small (4 to 12 participants) and report scene replacement and childhood figures, but no prevalence of entities (Johnson et al., 2011; MacLean et al., 2013). |
| Brugmansia B. suaveolens | Established | As delirium: conversations with fully formed people and animals, usually without insight (Lockwood, 1979; Isbister et al., 2003). Within traditions: Matsigenka shamans take the strongest preparations to travel to the realm of spirits (Shepard, 1998), and for the Shuar, maikua is one route to arutam, a power that may appear as ancestors, animals or other-than-human figures (Rubenstein, 2012). The tradition frames these as dangerous teaching; clinically the state carries serious toxicity. |
| Caapi alone B. caapi | Unresolved | No study isolates entity encounters from the vine. This reflects a lack of research, not a demonstrated absence. |
| Psilocybin mushrooms Psilocybe · Mazatec complex | Supported | Mazatec healers describe the mushrooms speaking through their chants (Estrada, 1981). A survey of 4,285 people reporting encounters with "God or ultimate reality" included 1,184 psilocybin users. Across the whole survey, about 80% attributed intelligence and about 75% benevolence to what they met (Griffiths et al., 2019). |
| Without any substance | Established | Felt intruders in sleep paralysis (Cheyne, Rueffer and Newby-Clark, 1999); a sensed person induced by brain stimulation (Arzy et al., 2006); in the Griffiths survey, 809 respondents reported such encounters with no drug involved. |
06Within traditions
For most of their history these encounters have been understood within traditions that already knew who the beings were. The terms below overlap with the category without translating it. Each names a relation the scientific term leaves out: whom the being belongs to, how it is approached, and what is owed to it.
| Term | Tradition | What it adds |
|---|---|---|
| madre, dueño, doctor | Mestizo vegetalismo | Vegetalistas describe plants as having mothers or owners who teach through dieta, dreams and song (Luna, 1984). The being is tied to a particular plant and approached through a disciplined relationship; it can test or punish. |
| yoshin, ibo | Shipibo-Konibo | A class of beings is distinguished from an owner relation. A healer's bond with a plant spirit is built through dreams during dieta and has been described as affinal, like a relation by marriage (Jauregui et al., 2011; Watanabe, 2025). |
| people of the yagé domains | Siona | Beings live in named, morally differentiated domains. Seeing them correctly is learned over years and judged by senior specialists (Langdon, 1979). |
| xapiri | Yanomami | Spirit beings identified with particular species, who come down from their mirrors when a shaman takes yãkoana snuff made from Virola resin. Taking the snuff, the shaman "dies" or becomes other. The xapiri sing, heal, and fight harmful beings, and they can be lost as well as gained (Kopenawa and Albert, 2013). |
| Yube, the anaconda people | Huni Kuin | The beings taught the first drinker nixi pae; singing huni meka retraces that apprenticeship (Lagrou, 2018). |
| niños santos | Mazatec | The mushrooms themselves speak, through the healer's chanted words in the night vigil (Estrada, 1981). |
| machine elves | Contemporary psychonaut culture | A coinage that became a reporting convention. It accounts for 2.9% of coded DMT encounters (Lawrence et al., 2022), and its circulation shapes what new users expect. |
Amazonian ontologies change what the question of reality means. In the perspectivist account, animals, plants and spirits are persons who see themselves as human; their otherness lies in their bodies and point of view (Viveiros de Castro, 1998). An owner is a magnified person who contains and represents a multiplicity, such as a species or a place (Fausto, 2008). Within these frameworks, meeting such a being is an expected consequence of entering another perspective, and the practical questions are who it is and how to deal with it.
07Frameworks of interpretation
Six frameworks address what the beings are. They differ less in their conclusions than in what they count as evidence: apprenticeship and consequence, first-person description, convergence across reports, laboratory measurement. Each is set out below in its own terms and given the same space. The ontological question is left open. Each framework’s reading of what the beings are is graded conjectural, as every ontological reading is; the other squares mark the findings each framework draws on.
Indigenous relational ontologies
Emic and interpretiveIn much Amazonian thought the question is who the being is, and what relation one has with it. Its existence is not in doubt. Animals, plants and spirits are persons who see themselves as human; what differs is their body and point of view (Viveiros de Castro, 1998). An owner or mother is a magnified person who contains and stands for a multiplicity, such as a species or a place (Fausto, 2008). Under yãkoana the Yanomami shaman "dies" or becomes other, and the xapiri come down; Kopenawa describes their words as set in the deepest part of his thought (Kopenawa and Albert, 2013).
These traditions hold a developed epistemology of encounter. Knowledge of beings is acquired through dieta, song and apprenticeship, and tested through repetition, results in healing, and the judgement of senior specialists, who teach novices to tell helpful beings from deceptive ones (Langdon, 1979; Luna, 1984).
Within its own terms, this knowledge is situated. It belongs to particular peoples, languages and lineages, and its circulation to outsiders raises questions of custodianship that the archive respects.
Phenomenological
InterpretiveThis framework describes the being as it is given in experience and suspends judgement on what it is. Shanon, a cognitive psychologist, built his account from 178 drinkers and more than 130 of his own sessions, and treats the felt certainty of these encounters, their noesis, as a feature to be described in its own right (Shanon, 2002). Meyer's three levels of the DMT experience are an earlier phenomenology of the approach to the encounter (Meyer, 1993).
Its contribution is precision. It supplies the vocabulary every other framework uses when it describes what it is trying to explain.
Within its own terms, it leaves the ontological question open by design. Its corpora favour experienced, articulate reporters.
Parapsychological and transpersonal
InterpretiveMeyer set out eight possible interpretations of DMT entities, from pure hallucination to alien probes. He developed the possibility that DMT gives access to a hyperspace "closer" to physical reality than ordinary experience, that this space may be the fairy world documented by Evans-Wentz, and that the DMT state may resemble death, so that users could become familiar with it in advance (Meyer, 1993).
Luke places entity encounters alongside near-death experience, psi and folklore. He argues that independent, naive participants converging on a few recurring types is evidence any theory must account for, and he calls for open investigation of their ontology (Luke, 2011; Luke, 2017). The 2017 Tyringham symposium brought twenty researchers together on these questions (Luke and Spowers, 2021). Placebo-controlled DMT reproduces most features of near-death experiences, as rated by people who have had them (Timmermann et al., 2018).
Transpersonal psychology maps encounters across a wider field. Grof's cartography, drawn from thousands of LSD sessions, places meetings with mythic and archetypal beings within a continuum running from personal memory to union with the cosmic creative principle (Grof, 1975). Bache, a philosopher of religion working within Grof's protocols, argues that the working unit of deep sessions is a collective field of consciousness rather than the individual, and that the intelligence met at the furthest reach is that of the universe itself (Bache, 2000; Bache, 2019).
Within its own terms, the framework still lacks a controlled demonstration that an entity has conveyed information the person could not otherwise have had.
Informational realism
InterpretiveGallimore, a neurobiologist and chemist, starts from the brain as a builder of world-models. He argues that DMT switches the brain into a different model of reality and that, in this state, people make genuine contact with intelligent beings who are independent of them (Gallimore, 2013; Gallimore, 2019; Gallimore, 2022; Gallimore, 2025). Strassman, after his clinical studies, adopted taking volunteers' reports at face value as a working stance (Strassman, 2001).
Its contribution is a research programme. If the encounter can be sustained, the beings can be met repeatedly, questioned and compared. That is the purpose of extended-state DMT (section 10).
Within its own terms, it needs an agreed criterion for telling contact with an independent intelligence apart from the brain's own modelling. Developing that criterion is part of the programme.
Cultural-psychological
Empirical and interpretiveAcross the United States, Ghana, Thailand, China and Vanuatu, people more prone to absorption, and living in cultures that treat the mind as porous, reported more vivid sensory experiences of gods and spirits (Luhrmann et al., 2021). Under DMT, near-death-type features correlated with baseline absorption (Timmermann et al., 2018). Ritual discourse teaches participants what to attend to and how to describe it (Dupuis, 2022), and vernacular such as "machine elves" travels with the substance.
Within its own terms, it explains how encounters are shaped. It is weaker on why particular forms recur among people with little exposure to the literature.
Neurocognitive
Empirical and interpretivePerception is biased towards detecting agents, because missing a real one costs more than mistaking a shadow for one (Guthrie, 1993; Barrett, 2000). Psychedelics may intensify these social and animacy-detecting systems (Winkelman, 2017), and weaken the brain's high-level prior beliefs so that spontaneous activity shapes experience more freely (Carhart-Harris and Friston, 2019). Under intravenous DMT, alpha and beta power fell, delta and theta rhythms emerged at the peak, and signal diversity rose, tracking the intensity of visual effects (Timmermann et al., 2019).
Within its own terms, no study has isolated the moments of an encounter, so there is no known neural signature of meeting an entity. The framework predicts that encounters are possible but not when they occur.
| Framework | The being is | Evidence that counts | Left open |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indigenous relational | A person with its own perspective, often an owner or mother of a species or place | Apprenticeship, repetition, consequence, judgement by senior specialists | How these knowledges translate outside their own practice |
| Phenomenological | Bracketed: the being as it is given in experience | Careful first-person description across many sessions | What the being is, deliberately |
| Parapsychological and transpersonal | Possibly discarnate, continuous with folklore and near-death reports; at the limit, a collective or cosmic intelligence | Convergent reports from independent percipients; anomalous information | A controlled demonstration of independent existence |
| Informational realist | An independent intelligence encountered when the brain's world-model is switched | Sustained, repeatable contact under extended DMT | Whether such contact can be distinguished from the brain's own modelling |
| Cultural-psychological | A presence shaped by learned attention, cultural models and expectation | Cross-cultural surveys, ethnography of how seeing is taught | Why the forms recur where transmission is weak |
| Neurocognitive | A model generated by the brain's agent-detection and predictive systems | Imaging, EEG, controlled dosing | Why entities appear in some experiences and not others |
08Belief and aftermath
In the DMT entity survey, 80% said the encounter altered their fundamental conception of reality (Davis et al., 2020). Encounters framed as meeting God or ultimate reality show the same pattern with and without drugs. About 70% of the psychedelic group and 57% of the non-drug group reported less fear of death afterwards, and more than two-thirds of self-identified atheists no longer described themselves as atheist (Griffiths et al., 2019).
These figures describe what people report about their lives afterwards. They do not show that the encounter caused the change, and the samples are people motivated to answer a survey about such experiences.
09Fear and difficult encounters
In the forum corpus, 11.4% of encounters were negative or difficult and 5.4% involved a menacing or threatening being (Lawrence et al., 2022). Fear is far more common than hostility: 41% of survey respondents felt fear even when they judged the being benevolent (Davis et al., 2020).
Traditions treat danger as part of the encounter. Siona apprenticeship passes through fear and death-like transformation, and senior specialists teach novices how to recognise and deal with hostile beings (Langdon, 1979). Contemporary use outside such frameworks usually lacks that guidance. Medical and psychiatric risks belong to the preparation, not the effect, and are set out in each plant's safety box.
10Measurement and research frontiers
Inhaled DMT gives an encounter of minutes, which limits what can be observed or asked within it. Gallimore and Strassman modelled a target-controlled intravenous infusion that could hold the DMT state steady for extended periods (Gallimore and Strassman, 2016). Extended-state DMT turns questions every framework above cares about into things that can be studied: whether beings persist, whether they respond consistently, and what they communicate over time.
No validated instrument measures entity encounters. The 11-factor Altered States of Consciousness scale captures complex imagery but not agency (Studerus, Gamma and Vollenweider, 2010). The two large studies borrow items from a questionnaire on encounters with God or ultimate reality (Griffiths et al., 2019; Davis et al., 2020), and the forum study used it as a coding frame (Lawrence et al., 2022). Comparisons across preparations are therefore limited: psilocybin and ayahuasca trials have not asked about entities at all.
- Does caapi alone produce entity encounters? Unresolved
- How far do expectation and vocabulary such as "machine elves" shape the forms reported? No study compares naive and primed users. Unresolved
- Can a being met under extended-state DMT be met again, and does it respond consistently? Unresolved
- Do recurring forms appear among people with no exposure to the DMT literature or its vernacular? Unresolved
- Do entity encounters have a distinct neural signature? Unresolved
- Would a single instrument used across DMT, ayahuasca and psilocybin trials show the same structure of encounter? Unresolved
Sources
How to read the labels on each source
- Source type
- What kind of work it is: journal article, book, legislation, patent application, database record and so on. A word after the dot (ethnography, protologue, primary source) keeps the genre the entry was first filed under. “Unclassified” means the citation does not say enough to tell.
- Peer review
- Recorded for each work separately, and only where it has been confirmed for that work. It is never inferred from a DOI, a publisher or a journal, since journals also publish editorials, letters and commentaries. Where it has not been confirmed, the entry records it as not established. It does not apply to legislation, court decisions, treaties, patents, datasets, database and collection records, historical texts, films, talks, press releases or web pages.
- Check
- What was checked when the entry was added. DOI checked: the DOI’s registry record (Crossref) matched the citation’s title, first author and year. Verified: the record itself was opened and matched the citation: a library catalogue record for a book, or the page itself for a database entry, law, patent or archive document. “Verified (abstract)” and “(summary)” mean only the abstract or a summary was read. Located: a record was found but not fully matched. Bibliographic record and Stable record (in essays): a catalogue or stable web record exists; what was checked against it is not recorded. Unverified: no check is recorded. No locator found: a search found no record. Secondary: read through another source.
- What the labels do not say
- None of them means the source supports a particular sentence. Where a sentence is graded, its evidence note names its sources and whether each supports it, disputes it or gives context. Dates and reviewers of checks are not recorded for each entry; the version note at the foot of a graded page dates its last review.
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- Bache, C.M. (2000) Dark Night, Early Dawn: Steps to a Deep Ecology of Mind. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
- Bache, C.M. (2019) LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press.
- Barrett, J.L. (2000) ‘Exploring the natural foundations of religion’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4(1), pp. 29–34.
- Bonhomme, J. (2005) Le miroir et le crâne: parcours initiatique du Bwete Misoko (Gabon). Paris: CNRS Éditions.
- Carhart-Harris, R.L. and Friston, K.J. (2019) ‘REBUS and the anarchic brain: toward a unified model of the brain action of psychedelics’, Pharmacological Reviews, 71(3), pp. 316–344.
- Cheyne, J.A., Rueffer, S.D. and Newby-Clark, I.R. (1999) ‘Hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations during sleep paralysis: neurological and cultural construction of the night-mare’, Consciousness and Cognition, 8(3), pp. 319–337.
- Davis, A.K., Clifton, J.M., Weaver, E.G., Hurwitz, E.S., Johnson, M.W. and Griffiths, R.R. (2020) ‘Survey of entity encounter experiences occasioned by inhaled N,N-dimethyltryptamine: phenomenology, interpretation, and enduring effects’, Journal of Psychopharmacology, 34(9), pp. 1008–1020. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0269881120916143.
- Díaz, J.L. (2013) ‘Salvia divinorum: a psychopharmacological riddle and a mind-body prospect’, Current Drug Abuse Reviews, 6(1), pp. 43–53. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2174/18744737112059990004.
- Dupuis, D. (2022) 'The socialization of hallucinations: cultural priors, social interactions, and contextual factors in the use of psychedelics', Transcultural Psychiatry, 59(5), pp. 625–637.
- Estrada, Á. (1981) María Sabina: Her Life and Chants. Santa Barbara, CA: Ross-Erikson.
- Evans-Wentz, W.Y. (1911) The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries. London: Henry Frowde.
- Fausto, C. (2008) ‘Too many owners: mastery and ownership in Amazonia’, Mana, 14(2), pp. 329–366.
- Fernandez, J.W. (1982) Bwiti: An Ethnography of the Religious Imagination in Africa. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
- Gallimore, A.R. (2013) ‘Building alien worlds: the neuropsychological and evolutionary implications of the astonishing psychoactive effects of N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT)’, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 27(3), pp. 455–503.
- Gallimore, A.R. and Strassman, R.J. (2016) ‘A model for the application of target-controlled intravenous infusion for a prolonged immersive DMT psychedelic experience’, Frontiers in Pharmacology, 7, 211. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3389/fphar.2016.00211.
- Gallimore, A.R. (2019) Alien Information Theory: Psychedelic Drug Technologies and the Cosmic Game. Strange Worlds Press.
- Gallimore, A.R. (2022) Reality Switch Technologies: Psychedelics as Tools for the Discovery and Exploration of New Worlds. Strange Worlds Press.
- Gallimore, A.R. (2025) Death by Astonishment: Confronting the Mystery of the World’s Strangest Drug. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
- Griffiths, R.R., Hurwitz, E.S., Davis, A.K., Johnson, M.W. and Jesse, R. (2019) ‘Survey of subjective “God encounter experiences”: comparisons among naturally occurring experiences and those occasioned by the classic psychedelics psilocybin, LSD, ayahuasca, or DMT’, PLoS ONE, 14(4), e0214377.
- Grof, S. (1975) Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research. New York: Viking. Reissued (2009) as LSD: Doorway to the Numinous. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press.
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