Psychedelic Intersections 2025

Psychedelic Intersections 2025: Betwixt & Between Chaplaincy, Plant Medicine, and Aesthetics took place on February 15, 2025, at Harvard University's Swartz Hall in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This third annual academic conference brought together interdisciplinary scholars, practitioners, and policymakers to discuss the intersection of psychedelics and spirituality. The event featured keynote speakers Marian Goodell, CEO of Burning Man Project, and Elías García Méndez, co-founder of Casa Adobe Galería in Huautla de Jiménez, Mexico, offering perspectives from both contemporary cultural movements and Indigenous traditions.

Building on the success of the previous year's Psychedelic Intersections: Cross Cultural Manifestations of the Sacred conference, the 2025 program was organized around three research tracks: Psychedelic Chaplaincy, Indigenous Plant Medicine Traditions, and Psychedelic Aesthetics and the Transcendent. These tracks explored fundamental questions about how religious studies and spiritual care can inform the current psychedelic renaissance, examining best practices for psychedelic chaplaincy and the integration of spiritual care into both recreational and religious settings. The conference also addressed how psychedelic studies can build interdisciplinary and collaborative community across traditions, cultures, and modalities.

The program investigated how the histories and present realities of Indigenous traditions present new relationships with the more-than-human world, and whether aesthetics is uniquely suited to understand and convey the experience of a psychedelic body. Discussions examined how art can foster and induce transcendent experiences, and how it can be used in psychedelic settings as a means of integration.