Recreating Religion: Psychedelics, Burning Man, and SBNR Communitas

Abstract

Amid the so-called Psychedelic Renaissance, a growing number of Americans are turning to psychedelics for spiritual exploration outside of traditional religious contexts. This ethnographic study investigates one such community who engage in spiritual psychedelic use at Burning Man in 2023. Through observation of a psychedelic ritual with a substance called 2C-B, fieldwork during the weeklong event, and longitudinal interviews, I show how psychedelics are incorporated into, and shape, my interlocutors’ “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR) worldviews. As one of the first ethnographic studies of SBNR psychedelic traditions, this thesis provides a descriptive analysis of the beliefs and practices of this fourteen-member group, who I call the Cloud-9 pod. Using a “lived religions” approach, this work uncovers novel ways SBNR individuals are creating spiritual community, theologies, and ritual practice involving psychedelics. Chapters focus on key features of their spiritual lives: the environment of Burning Man, substance use, intentionality, performance, and recreation/play. Throughout, I explore how the pod’s understanding of spirituality encompasses unexpected juxtaposition of extraordinary and mundane, communal and individual, planned and emergent, normal and altered states of consciousness, work and play, sacred and profane. In conclusion, I suggest that these juxtapositions represent a common core of their otherwise eclectic spiritualities.