Echoes of the Forbidden Fruit: Psychedelics and the Supernatural

Mass hallucinations and the Catholic Church’s war on witchery via psychoactive henbane, belladonna, and ergot

Midjourney AI: A Renaissance scene with a mysterious woman surrounded by psychoactive plants

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

Psychedelic henbane was closely linked with witchcraft and the war against women by Christians over the past millennia. An Arizona State University researcher once noted how:

“In the early modern period in western and central Europe, those who doubted the reality of witches’ flight posited an ointment of soporific herbs (especially nightshades such as henbane and belladonna) to explain witches’ flight as the deluded visions of old women.”

1800s botanical print of belladonna

Smithsonian Magazine further explained the highly psychoactive belladonna’s link with feminine culture:

“In its Latin name, Atropa belladonna, Atropa derives from Atropos, the mythological Greek goddess responsible for cutting the life thread and belladonna refers to the use by 17th and 18th century Venetian…