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Psychedelic Shamanism
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Michael Carmichael is an historian of science. Following years of field research in the shamanic use of many of the world's major mind-altering plants, Carmichael studied directly with R. Gordon Wasson and Weston La Barre who were founding fathers of the scientific approach to shamanism and the mysticism of the psychedelic experience. Under the tutelage of Wasson and La Barre, Carmichael became a specialist in the history and archaeology of altered states of consciousness. Michael appeared in the Channel 4 series, Sacred Weeds, an investigation into the prehistoric and ancient cultures that used plants to gain access to higher levels of consciousness. |
PSYCHEDELIC SHAMANISM will be a wide-ranging survey of evidence that will trace the use of psychedelic substances from its origins in pre-history to the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. Carmichael will outline the broad spectrum of altered states of consciousness and their manifold shamanic purposes.
Michael Carmichael is a British-American scholar who read history at the University of North Carolina. He studied Anthropology with La Barre of Duke University, Ethno-botany with Wasson of the Harvard Botanical Museum and Chinese Alchemy with Joseph Needham of Cambridge. He is the author of "Wonderland Revisited" which was published in PSYCHEDELIA BRITANNICA. For the past twenty years, Carmichael has lived in Oxford where he conducts research at all of the major libraries and museums. He is writing a book on the history and archaeology of the mind and consciousness that traces the impact of mind-altering substances from prehistoric humans to the modern era.
Michael Carmichael's website is
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