Why We Need Myth, Ritual, and Story in the Psychedelic Age
In every culture that’s ever mattered to the human soul, there’s been a way to cross the threshold.
In the Vedic hymns, it was Soma - the god-drink that both nourished the gods and cracked open the human heart to glimpses of immortality.
In the Greek mysteries at Eleusis, it was kykeon - a humble barley brew that, for a night, let farmers, kings, and slaves alike walk with Persephone through death and return to life.
Among the Shipibo in the Amazon, it’s ayahuasca - not a “drug” but a plant-teacher, approached with dieta, song, and the understanding that you’re not just drinking chemicals; you’re entering a relationship with a being.
In the mountains of Lesotho, Basotho healers still gather Psilocybe maluti - “koae-ea-lekhoaba” - for rites of insight, healing, and connection, a tradition documented in our time by Cullen Taylor Clark and Mamosebetsi Sethathi.
Even in ancient Egypt, vessels shaped like the lion-headed dwarf god Bes have been found with residues of Syrian rue and Egyptian lotus - a psychoactive pairing that hints at visionary rites hidden behind temple walls.
Everywhere, the pattern is the same: substance + story + steward = sacrament.
Take one away, and the thing unravels.
The Function of Myth
Joseph Campbell once said that myth isn’t just an old story we tell; it’s a set of operating instructions for the human soul.
It tells us where we came from, what’s worth living for, and how to face death. It places our private struggles inside the public theater of archetype and meaning.
Robert Moore and Michael Meade go further - pointing out that in the modern West, we’ve all but lost initiation. The old rites of passage have been replaced with corporate onboarding, graduation ceremonies, or the disorienting free-fall of midlife crisis. Without these rites, Moore argued, our “inner king” stays a wounded boy, our “inner warrior” becomes a loose cannon, and our “inner lover” chases shallow highs without learning devotion.
And yet here we are, in the middle of a psychedelic renaissance, trying to package heroic sacraments into Instagram reels and microdose calendars - without building the rituals or mythic frameworks that have always given them power. As Jamie Wheal warns, we risk turning initiation into “just another consumer experience” - potent molecules without the soul-scaffolding to hold them.
Psychedelics Without Story Are Just Chemicals
When you strip a sacrament from its myth, you get potency without guidance.
You get the energy of the underworld - but without a map back home.
Ancient shamans knew better: the Siberian psychopomp who journeyed to the Lower World for a sick child’s soul; the Bwiti initiate who met the spirit of iboga and returned with a renewed place in the tribe; the Mazatec curandera whose mushroom velada wove Catholic saints and indigenous cosmology into a seamless night of prayer and vision.
Even the story of Jesus, reframed by Brian Muraresku in The Immortality Key, may fit this pattern. The theory? That the early Christian Eucharist wasn’t a wafer and sip of table wine, but a visionary brew - a psychedelic sacrament inherited from the Greeks, capable of showing you the kingdom of heaven here and now. Whether or not every chalice was laced, the framing matters: initiation into death and resurrection was central, and it was wrapped in story, song, and symbol.
Learning from the Past Without Stealing It
The challenge for modern seekers is that these traditions are not ours to lift wholesale.
The psilocybin rites of the Basotho, the Shipibo’s ayahuasca dietas, the Bwiti’s iboga initiation - they’re embedded in languages, cosmologies, and social contracts that you can’t just borrow for the weekend. To do so risks what Indigenous scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith calls “cultural appropriation as extraction” - taking the fruit without tending the tree.
So what do we do? We build our own rites of passage that honor the same principles without copy-pasting someone else’s rituals. That means:
Create your own mythic map. Draw from your lineage, your land, your symbols. If your ancestors were Norse, Greek, Zulu, Celtic - weave those threads into your work. If you’re urban and rootless, craft a story that speaks to your actual landscape.
Mark thresholds. Birthdays, grief, marriage, career changes - give them the kind of ceremonial attention Instagram can’t.
Embed ethics. Reciprocity, respect for source communities, ecological care for the plants and fungi themselves.
Hold the container. Appoint guides, set intentions, and integrate the insights. No hero comes back from the underworld without bringing fire to the village.
A New Myth for a Psychedelic Modernity
If we’re going to have a psychedelic culture that lasts - one that heals instead of hollowing out - we need what every ancient culture had: a marriage of molecule and myth.
Without story, we’re just chasing novelty.
Without ritual, we’re just getting high.
Without stewardship, we’re just selling tickets to the underworld without a return route.
The lesson from Campbell, Moore, Meade, Wheal, and the countless unnamed elders of the past is clear: the point isn’t to recreate their exact ceremonies. It’s to build containers that fit our own souls, in our own time - and to make sure that when we do cross the threshold, we know why we’re going, who’s guiding us, and how we’re coming back.
Because in the end, it’s not the psychedelic that makes the initiation sacred.
It’s the story we choose to tell about it.
