The First Latin American Psychonaut Symposium

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Long-time researchers, contemporary scholars, and representatives of the shamanic world congregated in a dreamed natural space on the other side of the mountain range, in the Parque Nacional Conguillío in Chile with the objective of deepening the knowledge of the subjective effects of the alternate states of consciousness.

Promoted by a non-profit organization, Fundación Lobeliana whose mission is to rescue, update, make visible, and make available the knowledge accumulated until today about natural drugs, breaking the taboos that arise when it comes to discussing the role of psychoactive in society.

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With brilliant and multidisciplinary names, the First Psychonaut Symposium of Chile and Latin America stands as one of the most attractive proposals of the region in the year and at the end of 2023.

Jonathan Ott
Giuliana Furci
Constantino Manuel Torres
Dale Millard
Donna Torres
Juan Nanculef
Dennis McKenna
Claudia Müller-Ebeling
Luis Eduardo Luna
Veronica Lema
Claudio Mercado
Stacy Schaefer
Mónica Gagliano
Carlo Brescia
Elisa Guerra Doce
Javier Echeverría
Cecilia Vicuña

A stage of the Gregorian calendar closes, but the mind opens.

Open your mind

"The idea of this meeting arises from the beginnings of the Lobeliana Foundation, where we set out to rescue bibliographic collections of researchers and influential people in the fields of pharmacology, botany and everything related to the use of drugs," says Benjamin Gelcich.

Benjamín is a filmmaker, independent researcher, founder and president of this project that seeks to preserve all disciplines related to the study, understanding and scope of human perception.

One of the objectives that Benjamín himself proposed was the creation of a library that collects years of studies related to psychoactive substances, an arduous work that this space has been developing by leaps and bounds.

"An extremely particular phenomenon happens: many people who investigate these disciplines, when they die, leave a series of collections and investigations that, in many cases, due to ignorance of their families and even fear, are usually lost or directly, thrown in the trash," Gelcich says.

"Currently, we have more than 4,000 books by different authors and researchers," he says.

Substance among the plants

But the foundation's work doesn't end there. In addition to preserving these valuable writings vital to psychedelic research in South America, the Lobeliana Foundation writes its own history, literally.

"We are finishing the book Hongos Psicoactivos de Chile, it presents a bibliographic study that crosses the record of formally described mushrooms in the country with those that present psychoactivity," the head of the Chilean foundation expresses enthusiastically.

"We are living in a time in history in which it is easier to make this type of meeting in a more open way. The taboos are being lost little by little".

Living and psychoactive legacy

Benjamin's work picks up the gauntlet of a legacy that includes fundamental names for psychotropic research. Those who, unfortunately, due to the passage of time, are beginning to perish.

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"The recent losses of Antonio Escohotado and Christian Rätsch were sufficient reasons to initiate this meeting. We pay tribute to the contemporary generation of both researchers, the few who dared to study psychoactive, forgetting the repressions that this involved".

The Chilean filmmaker pays tribute to two eminent scholars. The Spaniard Escohotado is the author of the famous book Historia General de las Drogas (General History of Drugs) and one of the men who most studied the subject of its illegality.

The German Christian Rätsch dedicated his professional life to researching the history and properties of plant species and their use by indigenous cultures. He also holds the medal of being the author of The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants, the most extensive guide to this subject of study.

Psychedelic revolution

While on the other side of the map, in the old continent, a group of Euro-parliamentarians, dedicated to promoting psychedelic therapies in the European Union, met for the first time last week.

Psychedelia moves forward.

Co-sponsored by Oysi.org