This excerpt is taken from Sky Gods and the Recipe for Immortality: The secret influence of psychoactivity over science, society, and the supernatural.

The dark side of the moon features a crater named after Jack Parsons, whose narrative reveals the obscure relationship between science and psychedelia. Parsons, a groundbreaking rocket engineer, was also a follower of a highly psychoactive sect led by the notorious Aleister Crowley, alongside the controversial figure L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology.

Hubbard, known for crafting vivid supernatural narratives for his new religion, also stands as one of history's most prolific science fiction authors. Together, he and Parsons engaged in rituals involving potent hallucinogens to summon otherworldly entities.

Parsons believed that science fiction inspired his pursuit of aerospace engineering. Notably, Robert Heinlein, a prominent science fiction author and a close associate of both Parsons and Hubbard, depicted a drug-fueled, sexually liberated cult in his novel Stranger in a Strange Land. According to The Washington Post:

> “Surprisingly, then, his most famous book is Stranger in a Strange Land, a classic of the ’60s era: With its message of free love, the 1961 novel about a messiah from Mars captured the imagination of lovers, hippies, and madmen like Charles Manson, who took the book as his bible.”

Bill Gates, who acknowledged experimenting with LSD in a Playboy interview, highlighted Heinlein's impact on his and Paul Allen's early passion for technology:

> “When my Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen, and I were kids, we fell in love with computing. But software wasn’t the first thing we bonded over. It was Robert Heinlein.”

While Heinlein played a significant role in the technological revolution, his supernatural ideas were shaped by the influences of Parsons and Hubbard.

Charles Manson, perhaps the most notorious Scientologist, manipulated his followers with LSD to orchestrate horrific murders in 1969, a campaign dubbed Helter Skelter, a twisted allusion to a Beatles song.

One of Manson's victims, actress Sharon Tate’s friend, was reportedly under the influence of mescaline during the atrocities committed by Manson's drug-driven cult. The shocking events captured national attention, altering perceptions of drug-fueled counterculture and paving the way for Nixon's War on Drugs.

Tom O’Neill's investigation has uncovered the bizarre circumstances surrounding Manson's activities. Despite a criminal background, Manson managed to evade law enforcement and regularly visited a clinic in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury during the psychedelic revolution of the 1960s.

At the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic, just blocks from Manson's residence, a troubled psychologist named Louis Jolyon West operated. Known as an MKULTRA operative, West later became the head of Neuropsychiatry at UCLA. He once conducted an experiment in which he administered LSD to an elephant, resulting in seizures and the animal's death.

In Haight Ashbury, it is suspected that West conducted unethical experiments on vulnerable individuals like Manson. O’Neill detailed West's perspective in an article for The Intercept:

> “When he arrived in Haight Ashbury, West was the only scientist in the world who’d predicted the emergence of potentially violent LSD cults such as Charles Manson’s Family… Another of his papers, 1965’s Dangers of Hypnosis, foresaw the rise of dangerous groups led by crackpots who hypnotized their followers into violent criminality.”

In the aftermath of Manson's cult actions, American society recoiled against the psycho-occult philosophies espoused by Hubbard, Parsons, Heinlein, and the original heretic, Aleister Crowley.

Crowley's influences trace back to Renaissance alchemy and secret societies like the Rosicrucians. He drew inspiration from John Dee, an enigmatic occultist who played a crucial role in encouraging Elizabeth I and the British Empire to explore the New World in the 15th century.

Notably, in contemporary times, Prince Harry, a descendant of Elizabeth I, acknowledged the role of psychedelics in aiding his spiritual healing following his mother's death. He wrote in his autobiography:

> “They didn’t simply allow me to escape reality for a while; they let me redefine reality.”

From the Victorian period onward, the British Empire maintained a close association with secret societies and alchemists like John Dee. Among Dee's famed possessions was a black mirror obtained from the psychedelic Aztecs, which he believed allowed him to communicate with spirits.

A researcher from the University of Central Florida noted that Aztecs likely utilized psychoactive mushrooms while employing mirrors to facilitate supernatural contact:

> “A mirror was found with a mushroom sculpture… and there are known instances of mushrooms being consumed in post-conquest rituals from an Aztec account…”

An article from the U.K. Royal College elaborates on how Dee may have inspired the Shakespearean character Prospero:

> “Like the fictional wizard, Dee immersed himself in a vast library, suffered a grave misfortune (in Dee’s case, theft of his books rather than exile), and believed that he could summon spirits… Dee was the epitome of a Renaissance polymath, someone interested in and expert in almost every branch of knowledge including mathematics, astrology, astronomy, alchemy, history, theology, philosophy, cryptography, and magic.”

The enigmatic playwright Shakespeare may also have been influenced by psychoactive substances. Renaissance figure Francis Bacon, often speculated to be Shakespeare, wrote extensively on opium as a means of achieving immortality while designing intricate diagrams for tobacco water bongs.

Research has revealed traces of cocaine and myristic acid, a hallucinogen found in nutmeg, in Shakespeare’s reported residence in London.

Virola, a relative of nutmeg, boasts a long history of use in South American shamanistic practices. It has been used as a hallucinogenic snuff by the Witoto tribe, who regarded it as a means to commune with supernatural beings. Harvard ethnobotanist Richard Schultes noted:

> “During the collecting of the bark from several species of Virola, this Witoto assistant informed me that the Witotos of his father’s generation ate pellets made of Virola resin when they wanted to see and converse with the little people.”

The renowned seer Nostradamus was purportedly known to use nutmeg to enhance his prophetic visions. An article in the Guilford College newspaper discussed:

> “Much ado has been made about the 16th-century Frenchman, Nostradamus, but how much is fact and how much is fantasy? Sparking a controversy that has lasted for almost 450 years, the acclaimed prophet has been credited with predicting major events in world history from Hitler to the assassination of JFK. Born in 1503 in France, Michel de Nostradame first became renowned for his ability to treat victims of the bubonic plague…”

How Nostradamus formulated his famous predictions can be traced back to the use of narcotics, specifically mild hallucinogens like nutmeg, in conjunction with deep meditation. He also practiced flame and water-gazing to inspire prophetic visions.

Moreover, gazing at flames can itself induce psychoactive experiences. A lecture at the University of Virginia highlighted how ancient Buddhists used fire-gazing meditation to achieve heightened states of awareness.

Additionally, civil rights leader Malcolm X recounted in his autobiography the use of nutmeg by inmates in the 20th century:

> “I first got high in Charlestown on nutmeg. My cellmate was among at least a hundred nutmeg men who, for money or cigarettes, bought from kitchen-worker inmates penny matchboxes full of stolen nutmeg. I grabbed a box as though it were a pound of heavy drugs. Stirred into a glass of cold water, a penny matchbox full of nutmeg had the kick of three or four reefers.”

Malcolm X, who was once a prominent leader of the Nation of Islam, had a rich history intertwined with UFO experiences. His revolutionary beliefs, shaped by psychoactive influences, were considered highly unorthodox during a time marked by racism and authoritarianism.

During his imprisonment for drug offenses in a dystopian America, Malcolm X recalled a supernatural encounter that prefigured the Man in Black archetype:

> “It was the next night, as I lay on my bed, I suddenly, with a start, became aware of a man sitting beside me in my chair. He had on a dark suit. I remember. I could see him as plainly as I see anyone I look at. He wasn’t black, and he wasn’t white. He was light-brown-skinned, an Asiatic cast of countenance, and he had oily black hair. I looked right into his face. I didn’t get frightened. I knew I wasn’t dreaming. I couldn’t move, I didn’t speak, and he didn’t. I couldn’t place him racially — other than that I knew he was a non-European. I had no idea whatsoever who he was. He just sat there. Then, suddenly as he had come, he was gone.”

Whether under the influence of external substances or experiencing natural phenomena like sleep paralysis, supernatural encounters are often linked with psychoactivity.

Continued: _From Lovecraft to Lennon: Psychoactivity, Occultism, and Otherworldly Phenomena_ — _Supernatural threads across sci-fi, rock & roll, and ancient psychedelia._