The Smith family exemption of entheogenic herbs as prohibited substances in the Word of Wisdom seems generational considering that Joseph Jr.’s grandson Frederick M. Smith, also a prophet to the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, carved out a similar exemption for peyote as discussed below. We begin by examining the historical setting of entheogenic practices of Joseph Smith Jr. and his ancestors, mentors, and colleagues. We then summarize the evidence for the entheogens available to Joseph Smith and his mentors, followed by descriptions of early Mormon visions and ecstasies we correlate with a clinical syndrome suggestive of intoxication with visionary anticholinergic substances.

The first “anti-Mormon” book, Mormonism Unvailed [sic] by Eber D. Howe ( 1834 ), attributed the exemption carved out for “herb[s] in the season thereof” to Frederick G. Williams’ influence on Joseph Smith (discussed below). Howe referenced Williams’ herbarium on either side of his Kirtland home while disparaging his “communion with spirits from other worlds.” Howe continues,

We are next told that every wholesome herb, God ordained for the use of man!! and we should infer that the writer or the recording angel had been inducted into the modern use of herbs, by the celebrated Doctor. F. G. Williams in Kirtland. F. G. Williams is a revised quack, well known in this vicinity, by his herbarium on either side of his house; but whether he claims protection by right of letters, patent from the General Government, or by communion with spirits from other worlds, we are not authorized to determine. (pp. 229–230)

In line with other health edicts of the 19th century, in 1835, Joseph Smith delivered a revelation called “The Word of Wisdom” suggesting dietary practices and the proper and improper use of alcohol, tobacco, and other substances. However, Smith carved out an exception for plant and herb medicine in the Word of Wisdom.

And again, verily I say unto you, all wholesome herbs God hath ordained for the constitution, nature, and use of man. Every herb in the season thereof, and every fruit in the season thereof. All these to be used with prudence and thanksgiving ( Smith, 1835 )

That Joseph Smith did not consider entheogens a problem is evident from his attitudes toward herbs. Joseph Smith knew of herbs and their uses and claimed the requisite knowledge and skill to devise and prescribe herbal remedies for others ( Heinerman, 1975 ). Joseph Smith’s development into a village scryer or “seer” involved following the path set forward in several esoteric traditions of the area he grew up, and possibly from his interpretation of biblical passages indicating the ingestion of some material preceding the visions of Ezekiel and John as discussed below.

Joseph Smith was also a restorationist and advocated a unique form of Native American “restoration” or “revival. From its title page onward, The Book of Mormon advocated a “restoration” of Native temporal and spiritual power and Smith sought alliances with Native Americans and traded objects of spiritual significance with them. If Smith learned of entheogens that bore the imprimatur of Native American shamanism, he would have been likely to seek mentors in their use, not only for himself but also for converts of his Church. Besides facilitating religious visions and spiritual ecstasies, entheogens have remarkable antidepressant properties, suggesting a motivation, possibly unconscious, for their use by the Smith family and in early Mormonism.

In Smith’s ( 1835 ) “the Word of Wisdom,” he overtly endorses the use of one mind-altering substance for spiritual ends, wine in the sacrament of communion (D&C 89:5). The revelation further teaches that “all wholesome herbs God hath ordained for the constitution, nature, and use of man—every herb in the season thereof, and every fruit in the season thereof; all these to be used with prudence and thanksgiving” (D&C 89:10-11). Adherence to the prohibition of addictive substances and the use herbs carries the promise of “wisdom and great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures” and protection from the “destroying angel” (D&C, 89:19-21). Herbs were a physical means to profound religious experience, experiences that rarely occur without using entheogens. As we discuss, evidence suggests that Smith gained knowledge and skill in working with herbs (D&C, 42:43; 59:17–18; 89:10–11; Haller, 2000 ; Heinerman, 1975 ), including entheogens. Joseph Smith’s grandson, Frederick M. Smith, came to the same conclusion as discussed below.

Joseph Smith likely understood that entheogens were a trigger for religious experience, a fact vindicated when considering entheogens as simple molecules cannot create the richness of early Mormon visions and ecstasies without the human capacity for religious experience. Instead, the religious experience is a product of the body through the actions of endogenous and exogenous neurotransmitters on human cognition. Mormons regularly modify their physical chemistry to promote spiritual experience through the Mormon practice of monthly prayer and fasting, but this is an unreliable method of inducing a transcendent spiritual experience of the nature experienced at the foundation of Mormonism.

Joseph Smith’s doctrine that God operates by “means” and that the physical is a gateway to the spiritual provides a theological rationale for using entheogenic herbs and fungi. In the view of some prominent Mormons, entheogens are not prohibited by Joseph Smith’s dietary “word of wisdom” (see below). Such entheogens would be physical means God has provided for humankind to achieve spiritual ends. Smith’s approach anticipated recent developments in the study of religion, particularly the role physical process plays in religious experience. In this, Smith seemed to anticipate Edward O. Wilson, professor of biology at Harvard and one of the world’s leading experts on biological diversity, who concluded that “we have come to the crucial stage in the history of biology when religion itself is subject to the explanations of the natural science” ( Fuller, 2008 , p. 4).

In contrast to traditional Christianity, Smith consistently understood matter and the body to be sacred, not profane. For Joseph Smith, the physical did not impede the spiritual but was instead the route to the spiritual. This unique aspect of Joseph Smith’s theology and prophetic practice finds expression in his doctrine of “means.” In Smith’s theology, divine action operates through the instrumentality of material causes, including human action and natural law. The Book of Mormon raises this idea to the status of a general law of divine action, asserting: “The Lord God worketh through means” ( Smith, 1830 , p. 236, emphasis added).

We find the best explanation for these phenomena is Joseph Smith’s personal use of entheogens and his administration of entheogens to early Mormon converts.

The evidence for Joseph Smith’s use of entheogens explained in detail in this paper is primarily based on six straightforward phenomena reported or observed during the life of Joseph Smith.

A non-Mormon medically trained observer, James J. Moss who witnessed several meetings concluded that the strange behaviors and visions were produced by drinking “medicated” sacramental wine and contemplated stealing a bottle “to see if it were drugged or not” ( Moss, 1878 ). Importantly, Moss, who was a believing Campbellite and had witnessed Methodist enthusiasm during the same period, distinguished between characteristic religious enthusiasm and sensational early Mormon visionary experience. Although Joseph Smith was not present at these meetings, he attended subsequent meetings where the sacrament produced similar bodily manifestations ( Bushman, 2005 , pp. 156–157). In response to the multiple complaints generated by the strange behaviors of Mormon enthusiasts, Smith closed sacrament meetings to outside observers, restricted attendance to male members only, added anointings with oil, and began construction of a temple in Kirtland, Ohio. During the dedication period of the Kirtland temple in early 1836, en mass visions were once again reported by many of those who participated, with the same accusations of drugged sacramental wine (see below).

Sectarian observers were appalled by the strange behaviors associated with visionary sacrament meetings that Mormons had opened to the public. Of this period, the Cleveland Harold & Gazette reported:

Discovering their yearning could be satisfied in Mormonism, seekers flocked to Joseph Smith (Figure 1 ), swelling Church membership from a mere 6 in 1830 to 8,000 living in Nauvoo by 1844 rivaling Chicago in population size ( Hoyt, 1933 , p. 50). Critical to the rise of convert numbers that the Church experienced was that between 1830 and 1836, seeker converts participating in Mormon rituals in which sacraments were ingested or anointing oils applied, had the dreams, speaking in tongues, miracles, and spiritual raptures they sought, with many enjoying visions of God and Jesus Christ ( Anderson, K. R., 1996 , 2012 ; Petersen, 1975 , pp. 80–81). The experiences surrounding the dedication of the Kirtland temple in 1836 have been called the Mormon Pentecost ( Olmstead, 2000 ), and had a similar impact on the rise of early Mormonism as the early Christian Pentecost had on the rise of Christianity; both sects faced the same charges of drug-related visions (see Acts 2:1–31, “KJV”).

Two salient characteristics of the early Mormon religion, founded by Joseph Smith (Figure 1 ) in 1830, were: (a) converts who were “seekers” whose “greatest hunger was for spiritual gifts like dreams, visions, tongues, miracles, and spiritual raptures” ( Bushman, 2005 , p. 147); and (b) converts who would sacrifice everything they possessed, even their own lives, and those of their family, to gather together, establish cities, and build temples to create a New Jerusalem, or Zion in America. While new religions were prevalent in the 19th-century America, the zeal with which Mormons defended their religion speaks to the charismatic power of the founding prophet, a charisma which may have leveraged entheogens for chemically induced spiritual awakening. We propose that the entheogenic context of early Mormon involved sacraments, ordinances, and endowments feeding these seekers’ hunger for primary religious experience.

Clinical research with entheogens (psychedelics) indicates that while they produce varying experiences, they also produce mystical experiences indistinguishable from those produced by non-drug means (i.e., prolonged meditation; see Griffiths, Hurwitz, Davis, Johnson, & Jesse, 2019 ; Griffiths, Richards, McCann, & Jesse, 2006 ; Richards, 2016 ). A double-blind study in the 1960s with students at the Harvard Divinity School ( Pahnke 1963 , 1966 ) found those sessions facilitated by psilocybin-reported experiences ranked, immediately and decades later, as among the most profound and life-shaping spiritual experiences in their lives (also see Doblin’s, 1991 follow-up study). Richards ( 2016 ) reviewed this and other clinical research and examined their implications for issues in religious studies. The profound and undeniable implications of entheogens are their ability to produce genuine mystical experiences that are phenomenologically indistinguishable from the mystical experiences that result from devoted spiritual practices or which occur spontaneously. The clinical research establishes that it is pharmacology rather than personal expectation alone that enables entheogens to produce the standard core mystical features such as union with and intuitive knowledge of God, a sense of transcendence of time and space, a connection with sacredness, a sense of ineffability, and positive mood. This direct encounter with primal religious and mystical experiences provoked by entheogens has profound implications for religious studies in general ( Smith, 2000 , 2001 ), and as we will show here, for our understanding of the sacred visionary experience of early Mormonism.

Defenders and critics of Mormonism may misunderstand this paper’s thesis as questioning the validity of Mormonism’s founding visionary experiences. Nothing could be further from the truth. All human experience and insight emerge in the chemistry of the brain, including the achievements of mathematics, science, epistemology, and even morality. To explore how brain chemistry was involved in Joseph Smith’s religious experiences and those of other early Mormon believers and whether entheogens facilitated those experiences is not to question the spiritual validity and power of those experiences but to illuminate how such compelling experiences were accessed then and draw implications for how they may be accessed now. If the preponderance of evidence leads to the conclusion that entheogens facilitated many of Smith’s visionary experiences and those of many early Mormon converts, then another oddity of the rise of Mormonism is explainable, the dramatic decline in reported visionary experience after Joseph Smith’s death.

Converts who reported angelic visitations, ecstasies, and visions of God in 19th-century Mormonism regarded their experiences as veridical and not as imaginary constructs of the mind. The 19th-century publication, The Essential Guide to Datura ( “Essential,” n.d. ), describes the subjective visionary experience of datura intoxication as “widely perceived to be real.” In reviewing firsthand reports of early Mormon visionary experience, we find overlaps of these with contemporary accounts of visions facilitated by entheogenic substances, and with known symptomology associated with entheogenic use.

The overwhelming logistical constraints of supplying scores or hundreds of Mormons on multiple occasions with various plant medicines could have been satisfied by an experienced Thomsonian Botanical physician like Frederick G. Williams, with his herbarium. As evidence of their close fraternity, Joseph Smith named one of his children after Frederick G. Williams. Smith had a strong and previously unremarked tendency to draw physicians close to him and place them in positions of close confidence. Smith began his career as a seer with botanical physician Luman Walters as his mentor, and later made Frederick Williams one of his top two or three confidants. In the early 1830s, Smith ordained him his counselor in the newly organized First Presidency. In the early 1840s, he made physician Willard Richards an apostle and his private secretary. Also, around the same time, he made physician John Cook Bennett a counselor in the First Presidency and arguably his right-hand man and closest companion in the early 1840s.

One aspect of Williams’ involvement in early Mormonism was his mission journey to proselytize to the Native Americans from late 1830–1831. Joseph Smith revealed to Oliver Cowdery and three other Elders they were to commence their missionary efforts to the Lamanite, as Smith called Native Americans Indians ( Smith, 1833 , p. 68) and scout the location for a satellite “stake” (or congregation) to be organized in Missouri. During this journey, the missionaries met Williams, and he joined the group to meet with, and proselytize to, the Natives near modern Kansas City, Missouri, in a Native settlement known as Kaw Township. For a botanically centric physician, an opportunity to meet with the so-called “Lamanites” and intermingle knowledge of herb craft and mysticism with the people who had been using American plants for millennia would have been an exciting prospect. Dr. Williams’ medical practice later reflects this newfound knowledge of “Indian medicine,” as evidenced by multiple advertisements Williams published in the Quincy Whig from 1839 to 1842 ( Williams, 2012 , p. 169).

Favoring herbs himself, Smith had great sympathy for this branch of medical practice. Soon after his induction into the religion, Smith appointed Williams to the office of Second Counselor to the Prophet, Smith’s scribe, and printer for church publications. As a physician, Williams was “universally known through this country as an eminent and skillful man” saving Samuel Smith’s wife in childbearing and reviving the newborn child ( Williams, 1972 ). Fellow physicians living in Nauvoo used ergot in the obstetrical practices and we have no reason to believe that Williams’ skills were any different.

One early convert to Mormonism living in Kirtland was a second-generation German immigrant named Frederick G. Williams. Born in October 1787, Williams took up the practice of medicine around 1816 after the death of his sister-in-law during childbirth. Williams gravitated towards Thomsonianism medicine and was frequently called an “herbal” or “vegetable” doctor. However, Williams ( 2012 ) did not limit his practice to herbal medicine; his skill set included setting fractured bones, suturing wounds, and treating burns, cholera, venereal disease, and delivering newborns ( Williams, 2012 , pp. 10, 15, 159, 162, 167). If Williams followed Samuel Thomson’s ( 1841 ) Materia Medica, which was in its 13th edition, he would have given enemas to assist with childbirth (p. 698), and if needed, given a tea consisting of raspberry leaves and “No. 2,” the later signifying the class of medicinal stimulants found in London and Edinburgh Dispensatories (p. 115). Since 1822, ergot of rye was thought “to be the most efficacious remedy in cases of protracted labor and excessive hemorrhage” and by 1838, was “was available in every dispensary in London” ( Bauer, 1838 , p.479).

Walters would have brought from Europe the medical and occult books from which he taught and perhaps loaned to the Smiths. Anyone with access to The Magus, such as Walters and the Smiths did, would read recipes describing hallucinogenic anticholinergics, or “herbs of the spirits” that could be smoked, used orally, dermally, or intravaginally. Ceremonial magicians in both Europe and America used visionary substances. Dale Pendell notes that included in John Porta’s book Natural Magick, published in 1558, “a number of recipes both for sleeping potions and madness potions, using stramonium (Datura), belladonna, and henbane. Natural Magick was an immediate best-seller” ( Pendell, 2005 , p. 244). Weirus includes “nightshade” in his visionary formula. Although nightshade can be a generic term for members of the Solanaceae family, including the Solanum genus of food plants such as tomato, potato, and eggplant, it could also be a term for highly toxic Bittersweet (Solanum dulcamara), or woody nightshade, with purple and yellow flowers and red ovoid berries ( Evens & Stellpflug, 2012 ).

Operating his laboratory, Walters could isolate the active anticholinergic component of the Datura plant as an extract or a tincture. He would know the appropriate doses to treat: respiratory diseases such as asthma, cough-variant asthma, and to relieve pain from sciatica, menstruation, and cancer ( Benich & Carek, 2011 ). Datura was well known, and “Indeed, so closely does it resemble belladonna, that even, in the intoxication which it produces, the same follies are committed.” The effects of this plant are well-known in some parts of Europe, and the plant was vulgarly called “Herbe aux Sorciers” ( Thomson, 1832 ) and was “commonly connected with witchcraft, death, and horror” ( Folkard, 1884 ). Walters undoubtedly used anticholinergics such as A. belladonna, D. stramonium, and Hyoscyamus niger as treatments and knew of their use as visionary substances. He may have also known the antidepressant properties of anticholinergic-facilitated experience and used these medicines to treat melancholy ( Drevets, Zarate, & Furey, 2013 ). Further suggesting that Walters prescribed psychoactives is a statement in the following report in the Geneva (NY) Times, “In the olden days, roots, herbs and vegetables were considered highly essential as medicine for nervous disorders by a number of physicians. Among the early physicians to use these ingredients in his prescriptions for nervous disorders was Dr. Luman Walters, a noted physician and surgeon who practiced in the village of Gorham over a half-century ago” ( Anon., 1929 ).

Walters’ medical practice fared much better than his seership duties. He secured his medical reputation by curing a child of severe “croup” after traditional physicians had, in despair, given up. Croup was “the common term for every affection of the windpipe,” stridor that produced a high-pitched crowing sound on exhalation. Porter ( 1826 ) notes that antiphlogistics (anti-inflammatories) were used by all physicians of the period, as were opium (Papaver somniferum) and Atropa belladonna and D. stramonium, both of which contain hallucinogenic anticholinergic alkaloids ( Hartshorne, 1855 ).

Joseph Jr. was chosen as a treasure seer by the same company that had hired Walters, leaving him angry and resentful ( Kane, 1995 ). Residents believed Walters’ mantle fell on the young Joseph. While acting as a seer for this company, Smith announced that he found golden plates containing a history of Amerindian ancestors, from which he subsequently “translated” The Book of Mormon. Smith used a seer stone to translate, and we hypothesize an entheogen; the use of the latter is suggested by reports of his frequent “intoxication” or “altered” appearance while translating. Luman Walters and Joseph reconciled because Walters was later reported to be a “disciple” of Joseph Smith in Kirtland, Ohio, suggesting Walters’ direct impact on Mormon visionary experience could extend into the early Kirtland period at least ( Quinn, 1998 , p. 131). Walters likely received his esoteric training, including alchemical-drug expertise while studying in Europe (see below). The esoteric physician’s involvement in Mormonism was confirmed by Brigham Young, one of Joseph Smith’s successors ( Young, 1858 ). Joseph Smith’s alchemical-masonic amulet suggests Walter’s drug-alchemical influence in Smith’s early career (see below).

Walters used a seer stone, conjuration, animal sacrifice, and likely a hallucinogen to occasion “interview with the spirit, supposed to have the custody of [a particular] hidden treasure” ( Quinn, 1998 ). It was Walters who “first suggested to Joseph the idea of finding a book.” Occasionally, Walters could be found reading to a receptive audience from an “old book” in a language that only he could understand and prophesied that Joseph Jr. “was about to find … a history of hidden treasures” and a “record of the former inhabitants of America” ( Cole, 1831 ; Morgan, 2014 ).

Mormon scholar and historian Michael Quinn ( 1998 ) reviewed the historical record about Luman Walters (1789–1860), who was an accomplished physician, preacher, and magician. Through his travels and scientific training in France, Germany, and Italy, Walters became an “eclectic” physician whose practices involved occult techniques that included the administration of medicinal herbs he processed in his well-stocked laboratory. Walters was an exceptionally qualified mentor. During Joseph Smith’s teen years and early twenties, Walters utilized his occult training as an astrologer and seer for treasure companies, one of which was a “fraternity” of rodsmen, with Joseph Sr. as one of the leading members. During this period, Walters was young Joseph’s “constant companion and bosom friend” and given Smith’s extraordinary level of intelligence, he readily received Walters’ teachings and eventually exceeded his skills as a conjurer and scryer ( Cole, 1831 ).

In an 1841 meeting, Joseph Smith explained a purpose of the lodge is to learn to keep secrets. Smith explained, “the reason we do not have the secrets of the Lord revealed unto us is because we do not keep them” ( Roberts, 1908 , p. 478) and later observed, “The secret of Masonry is to keep a secret” ( Roberts, 1915 , p. 59). What did Smith want to keep secret? Besides Smith’s unusual marriage practice ( Hales, 2015 ; Van Wagoner, 1985 , 1989 ) and his kingdom building ambitions ( Grow, Esplin, McGee, & Mahas, 2016 ), we argue it was to keep secret administration of an entheogen in the endowment.

According to Mormon writer Jeffrey Bradshaw ( 2015 ), “In the ceremonies of the Royal Arch Degree of the York rite, candidates pass through a series of veils and eventually enter into the divine presence” (p. 162), but in the Nauvoo temple endowment, it “is not a mere representation but is the reality of coming into a heavenly presence” (p. 218). Mormon historian Andrew Ehat ( 1994 ) explains, “In temples, we have a staged representation of the step-by-step ascent into the presence of the Eternal while we are yet alive … [and] “there should have been a change in us as there certainly was with Moses when he was caught up to celestial realms and saw and heard things unlawful to utter” (pp. 53–54, emphasis added). We argue that the “change” required to be “caught up to celestial realms” required the administration of an entheogen, a change that, like in Kirtland, would produce observable symptomatology. If this hypothesis is correct, an entheogenic endowment may have been the source of Smith’s confidence that converts would in “reality” be “caught up to celestial realms.” The secret that Smith needed converts to keep was the visible symptomology they would observe during the Nauvoo temple endowment.

In his book, Alchemically Stoned, the 33rd degree Mason P. D. Newman ( 2017 ) argues that features of Masonic ceremonies, architecture, and accouterments strongly suggest some Masonic lodges used entheogenic material from Acacia species known to contain the psychedelic dimethyltryptamine (DMT). Shannon ( 2008 ) and Nemu ( 2019 ; Editor’s Note: see Nemu’s article here) similarly argue for the Hebraic use of the entheogenic Acacia tree.

According to Chris Bennett ( 2018 ), the “imagery of the [Masonic] Lodge, was built with a set and setting that in many ways could be enhanced by the use of entheogens” (p. 681) and the idea that some “masonic drinks may be a remnant of early sacramental potions that contained psychoactive ingredients … [has] been pondered for well over a century” (p. 693). For instance, Bennett quotes from an 1835 Masonic history by John Fellows who in rehearsing the entheogens of Ancient Egyptians, Pythagoreans, and Druids, “refers to a soporific cake of honey and medicated grain medicatis frugibus [i.e. drugged]) along with preparations of poppy and other psychoactive substances [with fellow Mason as] its target audience” (Ibid). Bennett then notes Fellow’s informing the candidate that in drinking the potion offered to him during initiation, it is a eucharist by which “the real presence of the Saviour is manifest” (Ibid).

In America, as in Europe, speculative masonry subsumed many mysteries in the ancient world ( Casey & Gutierrez 2005 , p. 222). There is evidence to suggest that these mysteries utilized entheogens including the Greek Eleusinian mysteries ( Wasson, Ruck, & Hofmann, 2008 , pp. 2–7), the Demeter-Persephone cult (Ibid, pp. 12–15), and the Dionysiac mystery cults (Ibid, pp. 15–18). The Roman Phrygian rites for Magna Mater ( Drummond, 2013 , p. 46), the Mithraic cults of Persia ( Ezdejini, 2016 ), and the mysteries surrounding the Egyptian gods Osiris and Isis ( Berlant, 2005 ) are all suspected of entheogen use in their rites.

Joseph’s mother, Lucy Smith ( Anderson, 2001 , p. 23; also see Joseph Smith Papers, 1844–1845 ) revealed how “for a season that we stopped our labor and went trying to win the faculty of Abrac,” a secret masonic process with roots in much older traditions. Mormon scholar and historian Michael Quinn ( 1998 ) reports that the

Faculty of Abrac was a well-known phrase linking magic and divinity. Medieval and early modern magic manuscripts in England used “Abrac” and “Abraca” as one of the names of God in conjurations. [And that] “Abraxas [was a] Gnostic name for God that had become associated with magic.” (pp. 68–67)

Joseph Smith’s father and older brother, Joseph Sr. and Hyrum, respectively, were both Masons, and Joseph Jr. was likely familiar with Captain William Morgan, famously murdered for publishing the secrets of Masonry in 1826. After Morgan’s death, his widow, Lucinda Morgan, secretly became one of Smith’s 33 known plural wives in 1838 ( Compton, 1997 ). Early Mormon leaders and successors to Joseph Smith, including Brigham Young, the leader of Mormonism’s most successful schism, were deeply involved in Masonry before their conversion to Mormonism ( Durham, 1974 ; Tanner, n.d. ). There were masonic motifs, architecture, ritual, and iconography in the Nauvoo, Illinois temple. For example, on the outside architecture of the temple were the masonic sunstones, upside-down five-pointed star stones, moonstones, and a masonic compass and a square weathervane. Inside the temple, the masonic “all-searching eye” was shown on the original architect’s drawing ( Stack, 2002 ).

Mormon historian and former director of the Institute of Religion in Salt Lake City, Reid C. Durham documented Joseph Smith’s Masonic heritage and his adoption of Masonic ritual and iconography found in the Mormon Nauvoo temple endowment ( Durham, 1974 ). The Nauvoo Masonic Lodge, founded at the end of 1839, anticipated the spring of 1842 groundbreaking of the Nauvoo temple.

We now examine an amulet in Figure 11 belonging to Joseph Smith and gifted to Eliza R. Snow, his most esoteric plural wife. Figure 12 shows an inverted mushroom species (presumably Psilocybin) comparing favorably to the mushroom-appearing tassels dangling from both the belt worn by the Rebis in Figure 13 and the belt engraved on Joseph Smith’s amulet in Figure 14 . It is reasonable to propose that Figures 11 and 13 represent the same thing, Psilocybe species mushrooms.

Heinrich ( 2002 ) explores the connection between alchemy and entheogens, including the allegorical use of the Rebis such as the one in Figure 10 to transmit privileged knowledge of entheogenic A. muscaria (pp. 172–177, 184). The Rebis is a double-headed hermaphrodite linked to the prima materia, philosophers stone, an elixir of life within the allegory, A. muscaria. According to Lewis Spence ( 1920 , p. 10), one of the “grand objects of alchemy” was the discovery of an elixir to ensure health and prevent death, “elixirs of life” containing herbs and medicinals that Heinrich argues are entheogens.

English alchemists such as Elisa Ashmole (1617–1692) and Robert Boyle (1627–1691), according to Shelley, “were concerned with one or more substances, termed the red stone, the angelic stone, and otherwise, whose effects were described as spiritual.” Shelley then argues, “these are substances that produced mystical experiences and was implicitly psychoactive” and associates it with “the motif of [Israelite] manna, … the hidden manna of Revelation 2:17, … [the] hermetic tradition, … English alchemical literature from the Tudor period onward,” and in “the twelfth century theology of the school of Laon [northern France], afterward spreading to Cistercian, Franciscan, and other writers” (Ibid).

In his book, Science, Alchemy and the Great Plague of London William S. Shelley ( 2017 ) stated “that alchemical writings concerned chemical processes from their late antique beginning until the Renaissance. Spiritual alchemy originated, it would appear, in the early sixteenth century when Paracelsus [1493–1541] blended his medical practice of alchemy with his interest in the Hermetic-Platonic tradition of Renaissance esotericism” (p. 4). Sometime late in the reign of Queen Elizabethan (1533–1603), alchemical texts “seem to be exclusively spiritual, that is, that have no apparent interest in practical laboratory procedures” (Ibid).

Owens ( 1999 ) argues that Joseph Smith “certainly [learned]. . . about the Philosopher’s Stone and alchemy’s transmutational mystery” (p. 158). Alchemy became a subject of several artists in Europe. Owens argues that Smith likely learned about alchemy from “a physician named Luman Walter(s), who was a distant cousin of Smith’s future wife and a member of the circle associated with the early treasure quests” (p. 16) of which young Joseph was a member. Agreeing with Owens, D. Michael Quinn reasons that Walters was Smith’s teenage mentor and occult advisor ( 1998 , pp. 116–122).

In this statement, Smith seems to suggest that Jesus did not differ from him – meaning that Smith understood Jesus as shaman-like, as a human and not a God. Likewise, Jesus-like Smith healed the “lame arm” of Mrs. John Johnson ( Dahl & Cannon, 1997 ) and raised William Hungtington from the dead ( Curtis, 1892 ).

Although most of Smith’s revelations and teachings suggest the traditional Christian understandings of Jesus, occasionally he betrayed a different view. For instance, in 1844, Smith is reported to have said,

I am the only man that has ever been able to keep a whole church together since the days of Adam … Neither Paul, John, Peter, nor Jesus ever did it … The followers of Jesus ran away from Him; but the Latter-day Saints never ran away from me yet. ( Roberts, 1915 , pp. 408–409)

Implied in Heinrich’s discussion of these passages is his confidence that anyone using entheogens in a Christian context will experience “many of the states described … in mystical Christianity” (p. 5).

The phrase “out of [Jesus’] belly” may describe entheogenic-laced urine. Due to physiological processes, urine after ingesting A. muscaria is more potent than the tea initially consumed. The entheogenic component of A. muscaria is water-soluble, and when extracted with water, turns the water the color of red wine. Further, the mushrooms upturned cap (Figure 9 ) and becomes the cup holding the elixir of life, and the mushroom itself becomes the life-giving bread. Heinrich ( 2002 , p. 122) quotes Jesus telling he disciples:

I am the living bread that has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh … if you do not eat [my] flesh and drink [my] blood, you will not have life in you. Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life … for my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink … As I, who am sent by the living Father, myself draw life from the Father, so whoever eats me will draw life from me. This is the bread come down from heaven … anyone who eats this bread will live forever. (p. 121)

The “living water,” according to Heinrich, is water-soluble muscimol, the principle psychoactive in A. muscaria. Muscimol is excreted unchanged in the urine, which the shaman or others can consume. Supporting Heinrich’s argument of entheogenic urine, we note Jesus’s saying in John 7:8,

He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

Where then did Joseph Smith first learn of alchemy and esoteric Christianity? In his book, Magic Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy, Heinrich ( 2002 , pp. 105–153) discusses the relationship between esoteric Christianity and using A. muscaria as a sacramental meal. According to Heinrich, Jesus unmistakably identifies himself with an entheogenic substance, an elixir of life and bread of heaven, the A. muscaria mushroom shown in Figure 9 . Heinrich quotes Jesus telling a woman,

… whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. (p. 120)

During the 13th century, esoteric Christian artists painted Biblical themes associated with entheogenic mushrooms ( Brown & Brown, 2016 ; also see Brown & Brown in this issue). For instance, in Figure 6 is an “Eden Panel” found in Saint Michael’s Church, Germany (1240 CE) showing Adam and Eve standing, and a serpent coiled on a tree in front of a spotted A. muscaria mushroom cap. Also, in Figure 7 , the Edenic tree also takes on the form of an A. muscaria in a ca. 1291 fresco found in Plaincourault Abbey, Indre, France. Figure 8 shows a painting by the Flemish artist, Petrus Christus (c. 1410–1475) portraying the child Christ laying supine on an A. muscaria bed looked over by Joseph, Mary, and winged angels. The relative abundance of Christian A.muscaria syncretic art led Antonio Escohotado ( 2012 ) to conclude, “it seems indisputable that there is a connection between visionary mushrooms and Christianity” (p. 73). There are reasons to think that given his esoteric background, Joseph Smith or one of his mentors had access to this art, decrypted it, and then encoded in Smith’s teachings, revelations, and ordinances.

Joseph Smith was influenced at a young age by several categories of esotericism, including esoteric Christianity, spiritual alchemy, and speculative freemasonry ( Owens, 1999 ). Significantly, some members of these esoteric schools of thought had an interest in entheogen use and encoded their knowledge in esoteric works of art.

Growing up and into adulthood, Smith lived relatively near to the Algonquin areas of the Potawatomi, Ojibwa, and Delaware peoples whom all belonged to the Algonquin family. We will explore Smith’s relationships with this group of peoples when we discuss his transactions with the Potawatomi in the early 1840s Nauvoo. However, it is enough to note that Smith likely noted the secretive Midewiwin medical society with its selective membership, graded training of new shamans, and their use psychoactive materials including datura and A. muscaria.

Delaware ( Tantaquidgeon, 1972 , p. 37) and Mohegan (Ibid, pp. 72, 128) peoples were familiar with datura. Native Americans living in Virginia gave a psychoactive brew called “wysoccan” to their young men during a rite of passage, causing a “derangement for 20 days,” strongly suggesting it contained D. stramonium ( Schultes, 1975 , 9, 142) or A. muscaria ( Geraty, 2015 ). Most North American Eastern Woodland Indian groups reported: “datura as the base of a narcotic drink used in manhood initiation rites” ( Goodman, 1993 ). In 1705, Virginian Indians were reported to have been using datura in their religious ceremonies ( Safford, 1922 ) and there was widespread use of datura in initiation ceremonies in Native North America ( Jacobs, 1996 ). Further, sometimes, Eastern Native Americans would add “datura and other powerful substances … to tobacco to prepare a particularly potent smoke” ( Fuller, 2008 , p. 81).

Midewiwin shaman are believed to possess the power of a long life, even “victory over death” through healing plants and the rituals. Such power strongly suggests that among other herbal remedies, the Midewiwin shaman utilized entheogenic material.

Together, these stories transmit knowledge about A. muscaria, where to look for it, how to recognize it, the joys it can bestow, and the displeasure of authorities if consumed. For instance, these mushrooms are always associated with trees such as cedar and birch and have red tops with white tufts. The experience of ingesting these mushrooms includes transient ego disillusion, unity with the Divine, and mood elevations. The stories also warn of authoritarian displeasure, whom themselves refuse filling their hearts with happiness, try to suppress its use. In The Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith relates a similar story about Lehi’s use of entheogens. Lehi comes upon a tree ladened with fruit that filled his soul “with exceeding great joy.” However, others, whose dress was “exceeding fine,” mocked, and pointed their fingers at those “partaking of the fruit.” The scoffing caused some who ate from the tree to feel ashamed and fall “away into forbidden paths” ( Smith, J., 1830 , p. 20).

We summarize here the version told by medicine woman Keewaydinoquay Peschel ( 1979 ) where Miskwedo, the red-topped mushrooms, the spiritual children of Grandmother Cedar and Grandfather Birch. Two brothers came upon Miskwedo “turning and revolving, buzzing and murmuring, singing a strange song of happiness under a brilliantly sunny sky.” The older brother tried to dissuade his younger brother from eating the mushroom, but defies his brother and merged with the mushroom, becoming a Miskwedo himself. Distraught, the older brother ran home to ask the medicine men what to do; and he was told to return, locate the chief and the wisest Miskwedo, and stick the quill of an eagle feather through each of their stipes to stop them turning and singing songs of happiness, then to do the same to his younger brother and carry him home. He followed the elder’s instruction, and his younger brother turned back into his previous form. However, after returning home, the older brother arose in the morning “with his heart heavy with sadness and foreboding,” while his younger brother “arose smiling each day, his heart filled with happiness, his lips singing merriment.” The older brother became suspicious when, the younger brother urinated more frequently and took longer than before. When the older brother investigated, he found his younger brother with “arms are open wide, spread like the umbrella of a mushroom” with beautiful robes “glowing red, and tufts of white” singing with a “voice of happiness” to the “people following him.” Now and forever, older brothers are unhappy in contrast to the younger brothers who “drink the Elixir of the Great Miskwedo” learning much of “the supernatural and other knowledge” by drinking “the liquid Power of the Sun.”

Joseph Smith demonstrated his interest in Native American life at age 18 when he regaled his family with stories of ancient Indian life ( Smith, L. M., 1853 , p. 79), and later partially built his prophetic career on a Native platform with The Book of Mormon. Comparative religionist Åke V. Ström ( 1969 ) has demonstrated many parallels of Joseph Smith’s teachings and practices with those of Native religions of Northeastern North America, especially that of the Algonquins. The parallels are extensive enough that Ström posits that the boy Joseph may have been heavily influenced by an Algonquin neighbor. Smith’s Native American influences may have included North American entheogens, such as D. stramonium, A. muscaria, and Psilocybe species. The Native Americans used entheogens in medical and spiritual practices such as the Ojibway Midewiwin or Grand Medical Society. The Ojibway (Anishinaabe people) in their legend of Miskwedo described the use and effects of A. muscaria ( Navet, 1988 ).

Smith always lived close to Native Americans and likely was influenced by shamanic activities. For instance, the Algonquin (Delaware, Fox, Ojibwa, Potawatomi, Sauk) in the Northeast and Great Plains, the Iroquois (Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca) in the northeast ( Tooker & Sturtevant, 1979 , p. xviii) and the Cherokee in the southeast ( Hamel & Chiltoskey, 1975 , p. 41) and their shamans resided close enough to Joseph Smith that he would have been captivated by their religious and medical practices.

Emma Hale, Joseph’s wife, was gifted in using herbs. One of Emma’s medicines was a healing salve that contained “jimson weed” or Datura stramonium ( Bailey, 1952 ) and when the Sauk Indians visited Nauvoo in 1841, she exchanged recipes for herbal medicines with the wife of Chief Keokuk ( Newell & Avery, 1994 ). In 1867, Emma wrote to her son, Joseph Smith III: “I will tell you now how I make the salve. Of sweet elder bark a good large handful after it is scraped, and as much gymson [jimson] leaves and buds if they are green and tender enough to be pounded up fine” ( Bidamon, 1867 ; Youngreen, 2001 , pp. 97, 119). Emma’s grandchildren also reported her use of psychoactive medicinal beer, ginseng, and lobelia, or “Indian tobacco” ( Youngreen, 2001 , pp. 73, 99). Ginseng has stimulant, antidepressant, and aphrodisiac properties, while lobelia (a hallucinogen and sedative) had entheogenic uses among Native Americans ( Alrashedy & Molina, 2016 ).

Joseph Sr.’s esoteric Christian A. muscaria dream concludes with Joseph Sr. explaining to his wife, Lucy, “I drew near and began to eat [the fruit] of it, and I found it delicious beyond description. As I was eating, I said in my heart, ‘I cannot eat this alone, I must bring my wife and children, that they may partake with me.’ I went and brought my family, which consisted of a wife and seven children, and we all commenced eating, and praising God for this blessing. We were exceedingly happy, insomuch that our joy could not easily be expressed” ( Smith, L. M., 1853 , p. 85).

In this dream, Joseph Sr. incorporates the spiny, thorny fruit of the chestnut, a feature of the first dream, which is similar in appearance to the fruit of datura. Instead of datura, however, the umbrella-shaped fruit scooped from the ground in the second dream evokes images of dazzling white spores dropping from the gills of an A. muscaria against a bright background or on a black surface.

The same year as the first dream, Joseph Sr. had a second entheogen-related dream, which involved basking in ecstasy, the joy, and love associated with the Edenic tree of life. In this dream, which he related to his wife Lucy, a psychopomp leads Joseph Sr. to a tree with, “beautiful branches spread themselves somewhat like an umbrella, and it bore a kind of fruit, in shape much like a chestnut bur, and as white as snow, or, if possible, whiter.” As he watched, the chestnut “shells commenced opening and shedding their particles, or the fruit which they contained, which was of dazzling whiteness.” When he partook of the fruit, he experienced something “delicious beyond description” and, inviting his family to eat, they “got down upon [their] knees, and scooped [the fruit] up, eating it by double handfuls” ( Smith, L. M., 1853 , p. 85).

The frightening aspect of Smith’s dream suggests a waking experience with datura fruit and his memory of the biblical warnings of death (“thou shalt surely die”) associated with the “tree of knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:17), coupled with his awareness of reports of fatalities associated with datura poisoning (e.g., Bigelow, 1817 ). Smith’s guide echoes the serpent in Genesis 3:3, who advises that eating of the fruit “will make you wise.” An element of Joseph Sr.’s first dream reappears in his second dream, thorns. Significantly, thorns are introduced into the world, according to Genesis 3:3, because of the ingestion of the “forbidden fruit” of the tree, perhaps symbolically referencing the thorny mature datura seedpod. What then, was the knowledge that Joseph Sr. received from his spirit guide and his dreams? According to his wife, following his two dreams, Joseph Sr. “seemed more confirmed than ever, in the opinion that there was no order or class of religionists that knew any more concerning the Kingdom of God, than those of the world, or such as made no profession of religion whatever” ( Smith, L. M., 1853 , p. 60).

The following datura experience posted online is impressive for its robust emotional impact, the overlay of visionary material on everyday reality, and the generation of a different reality.

You effectively keep your rational, sober mind along with your ego while on Datura; it’s rather that your sober mind is experiencing a completely different reality. Imagine normal sobriety but as you start to dream while awake. Rather than enlightenment through ego death, the nightshades offer dimensional travel to other planes of reality ( deCypher, 2008 )

In what his wife described as his “first vision,” Joseph Sr. found himself entirely alone, although accompanied by an “attendant spirit.” In the “desolate field,” before him, Joseph Sr. saw only dead, fallen timber, and heard only “deathlike silence.” Querying his attendant spirit on the meaning of such desolation and dreariness, Joseph Sr. was told that ahead he would find, “a certain log a box, the contents of which, if you eat thereof, will make you wise.” Shortly after “tasting” the contents, Joseph Sr. reports being threatened by “all manner of beasts … bellowing … most terrifically.” In the panic, Joseph Sr. escaped on the “fly,” and when he returned to his natural senses, Joseph Sr. found himself “trembling.” Despite the frightful experience, Joseph Sr. reported being “perfectly happy” ( Smith, L. M., 1853 , p. 57).

Two dreams reported by Joseph Smith Sr. strongly suggest experience with entheogens whose content contains not only allisions to entheogens but also some familiarity with esoteric allegory and symbolism.

Lucy’s dream ended with her mood lightened as she concluded that her husband would share her feelings, when “more advanced in life, would … rejoice therein; and unto him would be added intelligence, happiness, glory, and everlasting life” ( Smith, L. M., 1853 , p. 56). Lucy’s dream included a conscious memory of having seen a “burnished gold” ring probably of A. muscaria. If Lucy deliberately tried this entheogenic fungus, she may have done so as treatment for her lifelong depression ( Groesbeck, 1988 ).

A. muscaria occasionally forms “fairy rings” around the host tree (Figure 4 ), and the color of a mature A. muscaria, as shown in Figure 5 , “takes on a metallic sheen ranging in color from red-orange to golden or bronze” ( Heinrich, 2002 , p. 14), a feature enhanced by early morning or evening light. Further, aging and drying converts ibotenic acid to the more hallucinogenic and less toxic muscimol and “once completely dry, the golden mushroom’s power is complete” ( Heinrich, 2002 , p. 170). A golden A. muscaria surrounding its host tree may have been one of Lucy’s waking memories and incorporated into this dream.

The golden Amanita muscaria could be the mushroom that best fits Lucy Smith’s remarkable first vision. Lucy’s dream occurred c. 1802–1808, at least 3 years before her husband’s two dreams in 1811 (described below) and 12 years before her son’s first vision. Joseph Sr. had just informed Lucy it was best for her to “desist” attending the Methodist church because his father and older brother were very displeased. Lucy related that “after praying for some time … [she] fell asleep and had the following dream” in which she saw trees that “were very beautiful, they were well proportioned, and towered with majestic beauty to a great height… I saw one of them was surrounded with a bright belt, that shone like burnished gold, but far more brilliantly” ( Smith, J., 1853 , pp. 54–55).

In 1853, Joseph Smith’s mother, Lucy Mack Smith, related several family dreams in her book, Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, and his progenitors for many Generations and from which we learn about Joseph Smith’s life growing up in the magically and religiously charged environments of sparsely populated New England and Upstate New York.

Joseph Smith Jr. possessed a Jupiter talisman, and a cane with a carved “serpent,” a character in the Edenic allegory, and one animal believed to be “governed by both Saturn and Jupiter;” this, Quinn argues, shows that Smith relied on the works of occultists Francis Barrett and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa ( Quinn, 1998 , pp. 90–91). Agrippa (1486–1535) names henbane, mandrake, and black poppy as three herbs “under the power of Jupiter” ( Agrippa, 1801 ). According to Barrett ( 1801 , pp. 89–92), henbane and black poppy are among the herbs used to invoke the “images of spirits” through proper suffumigations involving hemlock, henbane, black poppies, mandrake root, and other plants. Also, Joseph Smith possessed an esoteric Amulet ( Quinn, 1998 , p. 93) that seems to bear symbols belonging to both alchemy and masonry and representing Psilocybe species mushroom, which we discuss below.

Quinn ( 1998 ) has argued that the Smiths, who lived in Vermont, New Hampshire, Upstate New York, and Northern Ohio, engaged several magico-religious practitioners of which Luman Walters (discussed below) played a significant role as mentor to both Joseph and his father (pp. 98–135). The Smith family, including Joseph Jr., possessed and employed several magic-related artifacts including astrological charts, magical parchments, a ceremonial dagger, an alchemical amulet, a silver Jupiter talisman, and a cane that all “manifest direct indebtedness” to occultists including Sibly, Scot, Agrippa, and Barrett ( Quinn, 1998 , p. 118). Quinn characterizes these occult books of “enormous significance” to the Smith family, especially Joseph Jr. whose cane was inscribed with symbols from The Magus conveying the message: “Jupiter-reigns over-Joseph Smith” (Ibid). Shown in Figure 3 is the silver Jupiter talisman also bearing the markings of Jupiter.

Joseph Sr.’s knowledge of preparing plant extracts was recorded in 1811 when he collected and crystallized the 2018 equivalent of $57,000 worth of ginseng root (Figure 2 ) intended for sale in China ( Smith, L. M., 1853 , p. 49). Administration of ginseng root extract compares well with Modafinil, a widely prescribed pharmaceutical drug used to treat “excessive daytime sleepiness associated with narcolepsy or shift-work” ( Neale, Camfield, Reay, Stough, & Scholey, 2013 ). Having crystallized and likely made use of this psychoactive themselves, the Smith’s would have had no difficulty collecting, processing, and storing more potent psychoactive plants and fungi for their medicinal and magico-religious practices.

The founding prophet of Mormonism, Joseph Smith Jr., was born on the December 23, 1805 into a Christian family enmeshed in folk-magic and the occult ( Quinn, 1998 ). Joseph Smith’s father, along with his other sons Alvin and Joseph Jr., engaged in the “more esoteric components of the western New York religious-cultural situation” ( Shipps, 1987 ). Joseph Smith’s earliest mentor was his father, who we believe would have communicated his entheogenic and magico-religious knowledge to his sons.

The hypothesis of ergotism as the culprit in the Salem witch trials of 1692 ( Caporael, 1976 ) is based on the signs of convulsive ergotism including seeing apparitions, feeling pinpricks, pinches, burning sensations, and by symptoms of urinary obstruction. However, those afflicted had none of the constitutional symptoms or residual effects known to occur with ergot poisoning ( Woolf, 2000 ), making poisoning by ergot-infected rye bread less likely. The manifest symptoms were attributed to potions made by Tituba, a South American Arawak Indian or Caribbean enslaved person ( Albanese, 2005 ; Breslaw, 1996 ) owned by the Reverend Samuel Parris ( Dannaway, Piper, & Webster, 2006 ). Tituba was familiar with Hoodoo religion ( Martin, 2006 ) and plant medicines from her African heritage and could have prepared an anticholinergic such as datura ( Caporael, 1976 ). This could have produced the symptoms ascribed to Parris’ daughter, and her cousin, the first “bewitched” inhabitant of Salem, whose behaviors, resembled the anticholinergic toxidromal ( Holstege & Borek, 2012 ) and dissociative features of Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder ( Martin, 2006 ).

The Smith family involvement with the magic world view and possibly entheogenic material went back several generations. For instance, the Smiths were involved with the witch trials in 17th century Salem, Massachusetts, that may have been instigated by the psychedelic ergot fungi (Claviceps purpurea). Samuel Smith, Joseph Smith’s great grandfather, gave testimony in April 1692 that Mary Easty threatened him after which he reported, “I received a little blow on my shoulder, and the stone wall rattled very much” ( Smith, 1692 ). After the Salem trials, other generations of his ancestors resided in areas noted for beliefs and practices of folk magic and alchemy ( Quinn, 1998 , p. 31). European occultism also shaped the cultural milieu in which the witch trials occurred. Mormon historian B. H. Roberts noted, “Indeed it is scarcely conceivable how one could live in New England [in the 18th-19th centuries] and not have shared such beliefs” ( Quinn, 1998 , p. 29).

For Joseph Smith to fulfill his promise that every Mormon convert would have visions of God and spiritual ecstasies, he needed assistance from trusted associates who would covertly procure, process, store, and administer entheogens. Several early church leaders (including the Smiths, Cowdery, and Whitmer families in particular) were deeply invested in the study of occult practices, and herbal, plant, pharmaceutical, folk medicine /craft, and the utilization of “spirituous liquors” ( Brooke, 1996 ; Quinn, 1998 ).

Had Joseph Smith known the features of entheogenic toad venom, he would have undoubtedly arranged for its procurement and transport to Nauvoo in the 1840s. Further, in 1844, Joseph Smith instructed fellow Mormons to settle the region surrounding the Rio Grande River. One follower, Lyman Wight (referenced below) went to Midwestern Texas to form the Mormon colony of Zodiac ( Langford & Bandera, 2003 ), a site within easy traveling distance to both the peyote beds and the Sonoran Deseret Toad catchment area. Figure 25 also shows the area where the distribution of L. williamsii and Native American expertise in peyote sacraments and medicine overlapped with the proposed Mormon territory.

The twice mentioned “toad” during the production of The Book of Mormon suggests the remote possibility that Smith employed a toad entheogen in its writing. Further, the happiness mentioned by Boetious de Boot is a significant sequela of many early Mormon visions discussed below. For Joseph Smith to have used toad 5-MeO-DMT, it would have had to been smoked or snuffed. Further, I. alvarius entheogen would have had to be transported from Southwest Texas (Figure 25 ) along existing Indian trade routes into the American Northeast ( Tanner, 1996 , see map by Sanderson Associates). Peyote, found in Texas (Figure 25 ), retains its potency (2% mescaline) over thousands of years ( Terry, Steelman, Guilderson, Dering, & Rowe, 2006 ), while5-MeO-DMT retains its potency over a much shorter period. Although no literature indicated how long and at what temperatures, 5-MeO-DMT remains active, if it is like is cousin, N, N-dimethyltryptamine, its salts retain their potency significantly longer than when kept in solution. Presuming this entheogen remained active between harvesting, arrival in the Midwest, and use, a stuffed toad with 5-MeO-DMT could easily supply the needs of a magician or seer for a prolonged period or a small congregation of believers for a year. Further 5-MeO-DMT would be an attractive entheogen for Joseph Smith due to its immediate and profound antidepressant properties ( Davis, So, Lancelotta, Barsuglia, & Griffiths, 2018 ).

Further, in 1830, the year Joseph Smith finished his “translation” of the “plates of gold,” his occult mentor, Luman Walters reportedly possessed a stuffed toad ( Quinn, 1998 , p. 117), a common familiar of a conjurer ( Ermacora, 2017 ). Walters, who traveled in Europe, would have known the toad’s magical and possibly hallucinogenic properties. According to Lyttle et al. ( 1996 ), the more “purely psychedelic applications of the Bufo toad had to do with the so-called toad stone, supposedly found in the head [parotid gland?] of the Bufo toad … In 1644 [France], Boetious de Boot, in his Parfait Joallier [Perfect Jeweler], described ‘the toad stone’ alleged ‘to exist in the toads head … another sure talisman for obtaining perfect Earthly happiness.’”

Some years ago a spirit had appeared to Joseph, his son, in a vision, and informed him that in a certain place there was a record on plates of gold … [and that] he must repair to the place where was deposited this manuscript… [Joseph Smith repaired to the place] opened the box, and in it saw the book, and … something like a toad ( Howe, 1834 , p. 242)

According to Lyttle, Goldstein, and Gartz ( 1996 ), “Bufo toad (and related genera) has held a place in humanity’s archaic consciousness since time immemorial. The earliest representations of Bufo toads (and toads generally) go back thousands of years. The appearance of toad-based artifacts is prehistoric were portrayed in ancient pictographs, paintings, and sculpture” (p. 268). Secretions harvested from the parotid glands of I. alvarius are rich in highly entheogenic 5-MeO-DMT ( Barsuglia et al. 2018 ; Griffiths, 2018 ). Evidence suggests that 5-MeO-DMT, harvested from I. alvarious, was an entheogen used by the Olmec, Mayan and especially the Aztec civilizations where “Aztec icons focus in great detail on the Bufo toad’s parotid glands, which contain substances that may be trance inducing” ( Lyttle et al., 1996 , p. 269). The I. alvarius in Figure 24 bears a striking resemblance to pre-Columbian stone toad effigies such as the toad effigy with the Mayan Sun-God carved on its back from Northern Guatemala or Southeastern Mexico, in Figure 26 , and the stone pipe toad effigy from the Ohio Hopewell Culture in Figure 27 .

Distribution of I. alvarius in brown ( Terry, 2017 ), L. williamsii in red ( Hammerson & Santos-Barrera, 2004 ), and the proposed Mormon territory in purple (see text). The area where L. williamsii overlaped with the proposed Mormon territory is in blue. Distribution of I alvarius and L. williamsii adapted from the University of Texas Libraries at Austin

One of the most dramatic religious experiences found in the “Tree of Life” dream accounts reported by Joseph Sr. and recorded in The Book of Mormon by Joseph Jr. may be facilitated by smoking parotid gland secretions of the Sonoran Desert toad (I. alvarius) shown in Figure 24 and found in the same general area as peyote (see Figures 23 and 25 below).

Joseph Smith, who had promised converts visions of God, would have been naturally interested in the ceremonial use of peyote for Mormon rituals. Below we discuss evidence he sought to obtain peyote.

The white man goes into his church house and talks about Jesus, but the Indian goes into his tipi and talks to Jesus” … [and the Indians received] “their inspiration from the Great Father, while the white man [received] his through the book they have.” ( Hagan, 1995 , p. 56)

Why would Joseph Smith be interested in peyote that requires an overland journey of 1,300 miles through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Indian Territory before arriving in the peyote fields? We suggest that Smith heard of “aspects of peyotism” and its visionary properties as information made its way east, until in 1835, there were “European [peyote] cactus fanciers” ( Slotkin, 1955 , p. 208).

Peyote cult recovery first took place among the Huichol (discussed below) and Tarahumara tribes. Peyote use among Mescaleros and Lipan Apache likely had its origin in the late 18th century with “the Apache making one ritual complex from features selected from the totality of the Mexican and Spanish religious and ceremonial life they knew” ( Stewart, 1948 , pp. 35–36). Also, Åke Hultkrantz ( 1997 , p. 31) argued there are “reasons to assume that Mexican tribal Peyote ritualism constituted the transition to the Plains Peyote rite, and thereby to the modern Peyote religion” with intermediates being the Comanche, Kiowa, and Kiowa Apache. Further, there is evidence of peyote use by Lipan Apache in the 1770s. It would be naive to believe that Plains Indians shaman, medicine men, or doctors would not have been interested in peyote long before the establishment of Peyote religion.

After the Spaniards took control of what is now Mexico in 1571, peyote cults were suppressed by priests of the Catholic Inquisition, who nearly eradicated peyote rituals. An Inquisition document of 1620 outlines Catholic opposition to the ancient Amerindian religion and its peyote sacrament: “… peyote has been introduced into these provinces for the purposes of detecting thefts, of divining other happenings and of foretelling future events, it is an act of superstition, condemned—as opposed to the purity and integrity of our Holy Catholic faith. The fantasies suggest the intervention of the Devil, the real authority of this vice” ( Rudgley, 1993 , p. 75).

Peyote (L. williamsii) in Figure 22 grows along the Mexican–Texas border and has been used in Native American magico-religious ceremonies for millennia ( Bruhn, De Smet, El-Seedi, & Beck, 2002 ). “Indians regard the [peyote] as a panacea in medicine, a source of inspiration. Moreover, [it is] the key which opens to him all the glories of another world” ( Stewart, 1974 , 1987 ). In aboriginal time, the peyote cult was among the Uto-Aztecan tribes ( Slotkin, 1955 , p. 203), and perhaps even earlier “in the Mesoamerican and Greater Southwest cultural superareas” (Ibid, p. 204), and among “tribes adjacent to those of the United States: Pima, Opata, Jumano, Lagunero, and Coahuilteco” (Ibid, pp. 206–207). The diffusion of peyotism northeastward occurred in stages beginning to the “Old Peyote Complex” of Mexico before the Spaniards arrived in the 16th century, eventually culminating in the Plains Indian Peyote Religion in the late 19th century ( Slotkin, 1955 , p. 28; Troike, 1962 ). The map in Figure 23 shows the location of the peyote beds (dark gray) and the Indian tribes (light gray) who were practicing peyotism before 1800 ( Slotkin, 1955 , p. 207). When Joseph Smith sent Lyman Wight to Texas to establish Mormon colonies, he would have been in contact with both the source of peyote and Native Americans expert in its use.

During the period of Indian Removal beginning in 1830, Native Americans living east of the Mississippi River passed through Nauvoo on their way to their seasonal hunting grounds. Potawatomi delegations, also often including members of the Fox and Sauk nations, visited Joseph Smith between April 18 and August 28 of 1843 (discussed below). The purpose of these negotiations is not altogether clear to historians. However, as we will see, the negotiations probably involved Joseph Smith giving valuable and sacred property to the Potawatomi without apparent gain to Smith in return. We suggest that Joseph Smith may have negotiated with Native Americans for the delivery of peyote to Nauvoo for the Nauvoo temple endowment.

A Mason and early Mormon convert, John C. Bennett, was a practicing physician and obstetrician. There is circumstantial evidence that Bennett, accused of administering “medicine” to induce abortion, was familiar with the medical uses of ergot ( Hedges & Smith, 2010 ). Luman Walters or Frederick G. Williams likely had the education and practical training to cultivate, harvest, and prepare the psychoactive materials associated with ergot for the Kirtland temple. Bennett would have been qualified to safely prepare visionary ergot as a ceremonial entheogen in the Nauvoo temple.

Figure 20 shows frame from the ca. 1200 Great Canterbury Salter, in Canterbury, England, titled “God Creates Plants” showing God with four mushroom-appearing figures below him; all five figures have uplifted hands seeming to mirror each other. This medieval salter reveals esoteric Christianity’s fascination with entheogenic mushrooms. In this figure, God appears to wear an A. muscaria cap showing its gill side down, while the left-most figure appears to be a stylized Psilocybe mushroom and the far-right figure appears to represent the stromata of an ergot fungus sclerotium. The dark, purplish sclerotium in Figure 18 that has replaced a grain of rye will remain dormant for an extended time if harvested, or fall to the ground. The grounded sclerotium will eventually be moistened by rain or irrigation and produce stroma resembling tiny mushrooms in Figure 19 , while Figure 21 is an enlargement of a stroma showing its yellowish-red stippled head comparable to the head of the rightmost mushroom figure in the salter frame.

The life cycle of ergot lends itself to allegory in esoteric Judeo-Christian as it does in spiritual alchemy and masonry. For instance, the manna which Moses said came from heaven tastes “like wafers [made] with honey” (Exodus 16:14, “KJV”), a description consistent with ergot’s honeydew stage. While undetected ergot infects bread and causes disease, water-soluble alkaloids can be added to bread, making it an entheogenic Hebrew sacrament. Consistent with entheogenic use of ergot, Moses tells the tribes of Israel that manna is “the bread which the Lord hath given you to eat” (Exodus 16:15), a theme echoed in the Christian era when Jesus says here is the “bread of life” (John 6:30, “KJV”).

“Hierophantic priests might well have discovered how to achieve partial hydrolysis of the most toxic alkaloids of C. purpurea, resulting in an extract of ergot containing a blend of psychedelic[s] … eliminat[ing] the toxic ergopeptine alkaloids, converting them to psychoactive ergine and isoergine … closely similar to the Aztec’s ololiuqui” (Ibid, p. 7), LSD, or psilocybin ( Wasson, Kramrish, Ott, & Ruck, 1986 ).

William Shelley ( 1995 ) argues that ergot use as an entheogen can be “traced through the Greco-Roman World, through the worship of Mithra and the Hebrew Scriptures into the activities of the early Christians and from there to the ‘hidden tradition’ of alchemy’” ( Marshall, 1999 ). Water-soluble psychoactive alkaloids from C. purpurea (ergot) include ergonovine and methylergonovine ( Webster et al., 2000 , p. 2). These alkaloids are believed to constitute the kykeon elixir of the greater Greek Eleusinian mysteries ( Wasson et al., 2008 ). Peter Webster argues that “Greek priests could easily have harvested enough ergot [0.5 kg] from the nearby barley fields [to serve] 1000 Eleusis participants” ( Webster et al., 2000 , p. 8).

The physicians Luman Walters, Frederic G. Williams, and John C. Bennett (see below) may have provided Joseph Smith with visionary ergot. In Figure 17 , soft white sphacelia (tissue) is producing sugary or honey-tasting honeydew ( Shelley, 1995 ). The darkly colored sclerotium in Figure 18 , when mature, drops to the ground. When there is moisture, ergot on the ground germinates, forming mushroom-like fruiting bodies (stromas) with stipes and heads of various colors in Figure 19 . The non-water-soluble ergopeptine alkaloids “were the agents responsible for the recurring plagues of ergotism known throughout European history” ( Webster, Perrine, & Ruck, 2000 , p. 8). The same alkaloids were used by physicians since the 16th century to stimulate uterine contraction to hasten childbirth, to stop post-partum hemorrhage, or to induce abortion ( Scarborough, 1971 ). Use of ergot for these purposes included 1840s Nauvoo, Illinois where it was available to Mormon physicians.

A. muscaria may be the oldest entheogen known with some believing its use began after the “last Ice Age in the northern Eurasian forest belt [and] spread north following the retreating polar ice cap, approximately 11,000 B.P.” ( Hajicek-Dobberstein, 1995 . p. 100) and used as an entheogen by Siberian shaman for millennia ( Lee, Dukan, & Milne, 2018 ). Further, Indo-European speaking groups developed “a vocabulary pertaining to its shamanic use” followed centuries later by the “priests of the Vedic culture [who] sang hymns in praise of Soma the god, the sacred plant and the sacred drink pressed from the plant” (Ibid). It appears from the 2nd to the 9th-century CE among “Buddhist adepts … [who] may have been ingesting this mushroom” as an entheogen (Ibid). A. muscaria use appears in alchemy, Christianity, and among free and adept masons; we argue that it appears in the dreams and visions of the Joseph Smith family.

A. muscaria var. guessowii mushrooms, such as the one shown growing near Kirtland, Ohio in Figure 16 , are widely distributed in the woodlands and forests of Northeastern America, where it is recognizable by its yellow to yellow–orange cap with remnants of the universal veil forming white scales and a skirt about its stem ( Ostry, Anderson, & O’Brien, 2010 ). It fruits in enormous quantities, often attaining dinner-plate size, and can be found growing in a circle or “fairy ring” around its host tree. The fairy ring can be striking in appearance, especially as the mushroom matures and takes on a golden color, enhanced by the early morning or evening light ( Heinrich, 2002 , plate 36). The cap contains ibotenic acid and muscimol, with the more hallucinogenic and less toxic muscimol content increasing as the mushroom dries.

Psilocybin-containing mushrooms have different pharmacology than A. muscaria and historically are a major entheogen in cultures worldwide. When ingested, psilocybin content of these mushrooms is dephosphorylated into the psychoactive compound psilocin, explaining why these fungi “have been exploited for their psychotropic effects since prehistoric times” ( Guzman, 2009 ). Psilocybe species mushrooms are best known for their entheogenic use in pre-Columbian Mexico, where they were used at least the last 2,000 years. Psilocybe mushroom use extends back to 6000 BP in Europe and to 7000 BP in Africa ( Ruiz, Piper, & Ruck, 2011 ).

P. ovoideocystidiata (Figure 15 ) mushroom ranges from Rhode Island to Kentucky and is especially common in the Ohio River valley ( Guzmán, Gaines, & Ramírez-Guillén, 2007 ). These mushrooms are usually harvested from April to mid-June but sometimes persist into late September or early November and have a farinaceous or flour-like taste, possibly making ground-up mushroom concealable in bread.

The properties of datura were also well-known among colonials living in 18th-century Boston ( Meyers, 2011 , p. 40). During the 1676 rebellion by Virginia settlers, “hungry [British] soldiers consumed the plant and then hallucinated for eleven days” (p. 58). This same symptomology will return in 1830–1831 Kirtland.

Magico-religious practitioners also used hyoscyamine and scopolamine since antiquity ( Muller, 1998 ), primarily to facilitate visions and ecstasies during divinatory and shamanic healing ceremonies, religious rituals, and witchcraft ( Busia & Heckels, 2006 ; Keller & Kane, 1967 ). Anticholinergics were also used as an anesthetic by the Greek physician, Pediacus Dioscorides (c. 40 – 90 AD), and noted by the Roman encyclopedist, Aulus Celcus (c. 25 BC – c. 50 AD). In the earliest attempts at general anesthesia, wine extractions of the bark of the root of mandrake, and the seeds of opium and henbane were used to cause “dead sleep” so the patient “not apprehend the pain” of surgery ( Carter, 1996 ).

Two prominent members of the Solanaceae plant family were available in the areas the Smith family domiciled, D. stramonium (Jimson weed or Jamestown weed) and H. niger (Black henbane). The Drug Enforcement Administration ( 2013 ) reports datura plants growing wild, as ornamentals, and in herbal gardens throughout much of the United States from the northeastern states to Texas; and the USDA plant database shows both D. stramonium and H. niger growing in extensive areas across the entire Northeastern states and other areas in the country.

The availability of entheogenic material to the Smith family and their ability to process and utilize it are foundational to our thesis of an entheogenic early Mormonism. Sources of entheogens available to the Smith family and other herbalists interested in divination, visions, and spiritual ecstasies included D. stramonium, A. muscaria variation guessowii, Psilocybe ovoideocystidiata, and C. purpurea. Moreover, with established trade networks extending into southwestern Texas, Smith Joseph Smith potentially had access to two additional entheogens, Lophophora williamsii and Incilius alvarius.

The appalling nature of young Joseph’s surgeries, documented by physician LeRoy Wirthlin, is incomprehensible except to those who have experienced them ( Wirthlin, 1981 ). William Morain, a surgeon with a Mormon background, describes how the terror of such painful surgical assaults creates dissociative injuries within a child’s developing brain that become “an integral part of the psyche that can permeate all corners of [his] mind forever” ( Morain, 2013 ). However, severe childhood trauma does not explain his ability to facilitate en masse visionary experience; and does not explain the anticholinergic symptoms associated with his own early visions and many early convert visions reported to have occurred between 1830 and 1831 as discussed below.

Groesbeck ( 1990 2005 ), a Jungian trained psychiatrist, has argued that the shamanic-healer archetype aptly describes Joseph Smith’s personality structure. Groesbeck, who studied with a Huichol shaman, agreed with Mircea Eliade ( 1964 ) that the shaman’s role and function depended on their techniques of facilitating ecstasy. According to Eliade, a shamanic healer’s abilities in ecstasy or trance, to enter “into contact with divine or semidivine beings” (p. 84) and to “consort with the dead with impunity” (p. 214), generally resulted from severe trauma during early life. This shamanic complex and its archetypal pattern result from a severe illness early in life and strenuous ordeals ( Groesbeck, 1975 1989 ). Joseph endured such an ordeal at age 7 when stricken with life- and limb-threatening osteomyelitis secondary to typhoid fever ( Adams, 2013 Wirthlin, 1981 ). In a horrific and prolonged ordeal, the young Joseph Smith ( 1833 ) suffered multiple exquisitely painful surgical procedures without the benefit of anesthesia or sedation. One might get a sense of what this 7-year-old boy must have endured in a revealing revelation:

I [God] command you [to] repent, lest I smite you … and your sufferings be sore. How sore you know not! How exquisite you know not! Yea, how hard to bear you know not! ( Smith, 1833 , p. 23)

We have discussed mentors for Joseph Smith, which we believe knew entheogens and employed them in his mentoring. Overwhelming childhood trauma suffered by Joseph Smith facilitated his formation as a shaman prophet of a successful new religion, enabling the use of entheogens to their maximum religious potential.

Joseph Smith’s next vision in 1823 is notable for the post-vision weakness and its ancestral Amerindian content. The many ancestral Amerindian tumuli found and excavated in New York and Ohio undoubtedly fascinated the young Joseph, as did the widely held belief that Amerindians were the remnants of Lost Tribes of Israel. However, as he had 3 years previously, Joseph’s vision was preceded by fervently asking forgiveness of his sins. When the vision opened, a brilliant light appeared; and in the light, Joseph claimed that he saw an angel, identified as an ancestral Amerindian, with whom he spent the entire night. “I discovered a light appearing … until the room was lighter than at noonday, when immediately a personage appeared at my bedside, standing in the air… his whole person was glorious beyond description, and his countenance truly like lightning. The room was exceedingly light… When I first looked upon him, I was afraid. [And he] said there was a book deposited, written upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent” ( Smith, 1830 , front piece). Following these visions, Joseph arose to work on the family farm but on meeting his father in the field, “found [his] strength so exhausted as to render [him] entirely unable” to labor.

Joseph Smith reported excavating under a tree to find his white stone, recalling the excavation of Hiram’s white stone under the acacia tree. After recovering this stone, Joseph Smith placed it in the darkness of his hat, looked into it, and discovered that he had acquired “one of the attributes of Deity, an All-Seeing Eye” ( Bradley, 2010 ; Purple, 1877 ) reflecting another probable occasion on which he ate from an entheogenic plant. Joseph Smith, eating from such “tree of life” anticipated The Book of Mormon’s descriptions of an entheogenic “tree of life,” discussed below.

It was from underneath of the acacia sprig, believed to be an entheogenic symbol in masonic lore, that Hiram Abiff’s remains and “jewel” were reportedly excavated ( Bernard, 1829 ). Conflating “jewel” and “white stone,” Smith may have conceived of Hiram Abiff’s body and “white stone” being recovered together from under the tree. The acacia marking the burial site of Hiram Abiff’s body and “jewel” is understood in freemasonry as a “tree of life” (referenced below).

Smith’s understanding of his white seer stone as the white stone of Revelation 2:17 also connects it with the white stone of Hiram Abiff and, therefore, the “hidden manna” mentioned in the Masonic degrees and thought to have been administered in the more esoteric versions of those degrees.

His “actual first vision” and a vision of a divining instrument, a “seer stone,” initiated Joseph Smith’s career as a visionary scryer. Mormon historians connected this seer stone vision, in which Smith saw “a small stone…[which] became luminous, and dazzled his eyes, and after a short time it became as intense as the mid-day sun,” with his theophanic “first vision,” linking the visions conceptually and placing them in roughly the same time frame ( Bradley, 2010 ; Purple, 1877 ).

Huston’s and Heinrich’s entheogenic reports reveal the core features of Smith’s earlier vision: an experience of physical heaviness, visual darkness, an awe-inspiring light from above, a voice out of heaven, experience with the unfathomable Godhead and feelings of unspeakable joy.

The absolute profundity of the experience cannot be denied, neither can be adequately expressed, though one is moved to try.

The bliss I had experienced prior to this new revelation now paled to insignificance in an immensity of light that was also the purest love.

In the same year ( 1961 ), Huston ingested peyote cactus and reported: “I noted mounting tension in my body that turned into tremors in my legs … I [began] experiencing … the clear, unbroken Light. I was now seeing … with the force of the sun, in comparison with which everyday experience reveals only flickering shadows in a dim cavern… [I saw] worlds within worlds” ( 2000 , p. 11). Smith concluded that using entheogenic substances can occasion an experience with a form indistinguishable from those of the experiences of religious mystics.

Many examples of entheogenic experiences are reported in peer-reviewed literature and on the internet that bear a striking similarity to those of Joseph Smith. For example, religious historian Huston Smith initiation into “ultimate reality” was occasioned by a psilocybin-containing mushroom. Huston reports:

What the day accomplished, … was to enable me for the first time to experience the respective levels of the Chain [of Being], all the way to its top. The dominant effects of the experience were two: awe (which I had known conceptually as the distinctive religious emotion but had never before experienced so intensely) and certainty. There was no doubting that the Reality I experienced was ultimate. That conviction has remained. ( 2001 , p. 126)

It is also possible that Joseph Smith used P. ovoideocystidiata or another species of psilocybin-containing mushroom, although this is less likely than an anticholinergic entheogen based solely on the symptomology. We mention the possibility of P. ovoideocystidiata use here because this mushroom can be found from Rhode Island to Kentucky and is especially prevalent in the Ohio River Valley ( Allen, Gartz, Molter, & Sihanonth, 2009 ; Guzmán et al., 2007 ), where it grows on wood debris, especially along rivers, streams, and wet valley areas such as the Sacred Grove. The Sacred Grove hosts a great variety of fungi, besides A. muscaria due to it residing in a small valley of seasonally wet and cooler terrain. On two visits to the Sacred Grove before the conception of an entheogenic origin of Mormonism, one author (RB) found abundant mushrooms of several varieties, including one in Figure 28 . The photographed mushroom in the sacred grove appears suspiciously like a Psilocybe species mushroom in Figure 29 ; unfortunately, no field-testing for the typical blue reaction to pressure was conducted.

A high dose of psilocybin would have provided the mind-opening, cosmological, transformative, and disintegrating/reintegrating aspects of the experience, while D. stramonium would have given the experience of another reality, initially in the grips of a terrifyingly, physically real evil being. Unbeknownst to Joseph Smith, as for the mythical Adam and Eve, eating the “forbidden fruit” entailed an experience of evil in tangible form (Satan/the serpent) to obtain wisdom – that is to experience the “deepest abyss” besides “commune with God” ( Smith, 1977 , p. 137). Smith also acted the part of an alchemist transmuting or “transfiguring” his physical state to enable himself to find wisdom through the visionary experience of both good and evil, Satan and God.

A feature of Smith’s “first vision” experience that cries out for explanation is its stark tangibility and experienced veridicality. He emerged from his experience of the demonic and the divine convinced of the actuality of the beings he had encountered: “But exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction, not to an imaginary ruin but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world who had such a marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being … I had actually seen a light and in the midst of that light I saw two personages, and they did, in reality, speak unto me” ( Smith, 1839–1841 , p. 4). Smith either found himself bound by an “actual being” and then “actually saw” a light, or there were neurophysiological changes in his brain and body that facilitated their perception. Even if Smith is understood to have encountered external spiritual forces, one would have to explain what physiological changes facilitated his ability to physically engage with entities that cannot usually be seen or felt. Entheogenic D. stramonium explains how Joseph Smith perceived his engagement with spiritual forces as an actual physical encounter.

The positive symptoms associated with Joseph’s vision also suggest the known antidepressant effects of scopolamine (from D. stramonium or Black Henbane) or possibly muscimol from Amanita muscaria. Scopolamine “produces rapid and significant symptom improvement in patients with depression” ( Witkin et al., 2014 ), similar to the afterglow phenomenon of classic entheogens ( Majić, Schmidt, & Gallinat, 2015 ).

Table 1 compares the relationship between Smith’s symptomatology and those of the anticholinergic syndrome. Joseph Jr.’s description of his first vision is profoundly personal and unlikely to have been manufactured due to embarrassing symptoms diagnostic of anticholinergic intoxication he later attempted to hide or contextualize. Further confirming that Joseph was in a visibly physically altered condition after his initial recovery from the visionary state, he reports that upon his reentry into his family home, his mother asked him, “What is the matter?” ( Smith, L. M., 1853 , p. 133). Similar symptoms also appeared during Mormon convert visionary experience when Joseph Smith founded his Church in 1830 (referenced below).

Young Joseph either understood the sublethal, visionary dose or was lucky, since coma and death may ensue in severe poisonings of D. stramonium ( Le Garff, Delannoy, Mesli, Hédouin, & Tournel, 2016 ) and A. muscaria ( Mikaszewska-Sokolewiczi, et al., 2016 ). From Eldon Watson’s ( 1983 ) textural harmony of Joseph Smith’s first vision, we learn that just as Joseph was anticipating ego dissolution and imminent death, a “light appeared to … gradually descending towards him” until he was “surrounded by a brilliant light” creating “a peculiar sensation throughout his whole system” and causing “his mind” to be “caught away from the natural objects with which he was surrounded; and he was enwrapped in a heavenly vision.” In the vision, Joseph’s profound sense of guilt was assuaged as an angel appeared (the Lord) and assured him that his sins were forgiven. Then, “when I came to myself again,” Joseph explained, “I found myself lying on [my] back looking up into Heaven … without any strength … [but with a] mind in a state of calmness and peace, indescribable.” Joseph added, “my Soul was filled with love and for many days. I could rejoice with great Joy, and the Lord was with me.”

The symptoms Smith experienced related to those of the anticholinergic or mycoatropinic toxidrome were: hypertension and hyperthermia, agitated hallucinations, delirium and strange mental states, slurred speech, tremors, coma, and occasionally seizures, tachycardia and dysrhythmias, dry and flushed skin – especially the face-dilated pupils, mydriasis, and blurred vision, and dry mouth. These symptoms constitute one of five basic toxidromes ( Omar, & Foxworth, 2014 ). Features of the anticholinergic toxidrome in Joseph’s accounts of his first vision include being rendered “blind as a bat” (mydriasis, blurred vision), “mad as a hatter” (altered mental status, delusional paranoia, and hallucinations), and “dry as a bone” (dry mucous membranes), and a duration of intoxication lasting several hours or more. Paralysis associated with D. stramonium is also reported ( Anon., 1811 ).

[Was] ready to sink into despair and abandon [himself] to destruction, not to an imaginary ruin but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world [with such] marvelous power as I had never … felt in any being (see also Harper, 2012 ).

Early in the spring morning, Joseph Jr. knelt under a canopy of oaks, birch, and hemlock, to petition God’s forgiveness of his sins. The accounts of the ensuing vision compiled by Mormon writer Eldon Watson ( 1983 , see also Harper, 2002 , 2016 ) reveal the problematic mentation and peripheral symptoms secondary to the onset of what Burkhart ( 2004 ) identifies as anticholinergic hallucinogen intoxication. At the onset of his theophany, Joseph (cited in Watson, 1983 ) reported he:

Another potential clue to what Joseph Jr. needed to eat to gain wisdom was the biblical description of it as the “hidden manna.” The original biblical manna, appearing in the story of Moses’s Exodus, was described in Joseph’s King James Bible (“KJV”) as round edible objects found on the ground in the morning (Exodus 16:13–15). If Smith expected the “hidden manna” to take a similar form, he would have found obvious candidates all around him in the spot where he sought wisdom, growing on and hidden under the fallen trees of his father’s clearing.

Against the backdrop of the biblical Adam and Eve story, the Masonic-biblical promises of “hidden manna,” and the visionary commandment to his father to acquire wisdom by eating what God placed on the dead timber, Joseph Jr. was primed to perceive entheogenic plants and mushrooms at the culminating moment of his search for wisdom as a providence auguring that he needed to eat to obtain wisdom and of what he needed to eat to become wise.

Joseph Jr. sought his visionary experience in the clearing in “early spring” ( Smith, 1839–1841 , p. 3), the precise time when plants would be sprouting and entheogenic mushrooms could begin to be harvested amid the dead timber. Joseph, a firm believer in providence, saw divine purposes in nature’s provision of various herbs and perceived God’s “hand in all things,” the minute details of life (D&C 59:21; 8,9:10–11; Bradley, 2019 , pp. 186–188). After seeking a physical landscape for his own “first vision” quest for wisdom that actualized the dreamscape of his father’s “first vision” wisdom quest, what did Joseph intend to do when he arrived if not to follow the commandment given to his father in his vision, to obtain wisdom?

Joseph Smith’s spiritual quest is a continuation of his father’s – a quest for Christ’s “primitive church” for temporal and spiritual salvation, and wisdom. Joseph Jr. reported that a quest for “wisdom” was his motivation for going to a grove of trees where, at the age of 15, he experienced his first vision ( Smith, 1839–1841 , pp. 2–3). In what Lucy Mack Smith similarly called Joseph Smith Sr.’s “first vision,” Joseph Sr. began a quest for wisdom and forgiveness of sins by journeying into a fallen wood. He was told, “eat,” of certain edible materials found on a fallen tree, and informed, “[this] will make you wise, and give unto you wisdom and understanding” ( Smith, L. M., 1853 , p. 57). It would be remarkable if the younger Joseph’s quest for “wisdom” were not informed by the visions of his father. Joseph Jr. should, therefore, have expected that to obtain wisdom, he also would need to “eat” something provided by God. However, where would he acquire the necessary entheogenic foods? Here again, his father’s vision showed the way.

At 14 ( Smith, 1838 ) or 15 years of age ( Smith, 1832 ), Joseph Smith Jr. embarked on a spiritual quest. Like the alchemical “philosophers” before him, one object of his quest was “wisdom” ( Smith, 1838 , 1843 ). Joseph Smith’s later revelation “the Word of Wisdom” reflects the view that taking the proper things into one’s body – avoiding addictants and using “every herb in the season thereof” would enable the seeker to “find wisdom and great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures” (D&C 89). Before he went into the grove in 1820 or 1821 to obtain wisdom, already three powerful precedents directed Joseph to seek wisdom through what he ate. First, he had a prototype for his quest in the story of Adam and Eve, who acquired wisdom by what they ate (Genesis 3:6, 22, “KJV”). Next, the search for wisdom had also been modeled for him by the Christian alchemists and Freemasons, who sought wisdom through the philosopher’s stone, the Bible’s “white stone,” and by partaking of the elixir, the “hidden manna” of the Book of Revelation, which also promised that “to him that overcometh” the gift to “eat of the tree of life” (Revelation 2:7, 17, “KJV”). Also, finally, the quest for wisdom was more immediately modeled for the young Joseph by the elder Joseph, his father, who had been instructed through prophetic dreams how he could gain wisdom. Here again, the model was that one could acquire wisdom by what one ate.

Joseph Smith Jr. had visionary experiences in his spiritual quests that display several specific features. Analysis of these accounts and the features of his experiences provide data to support the hypothesis he deliberately employed entheogenic substances.

In each of these cases, the ingestion of some substance tasting bitter, sweet, or forbidden was transformative. Gastrointestinal upset is a feature of ergot alkaloids ( Schiff, 2006 ), Psilocybe species, and A. muscaria mushroom ingestion ( Beug, Shaw, & Cochran, 2006 ). Also, Smith expounded on the Revelation of St. John, explaining that “the little book which was eaten by John, as mentioned in the 10th chapter of Revelation” is understood to be “an ordinance.” In this statement, Joseph Smith informs converts that visions are associated with consuming a substance or the application of anointing oil during Mormon ordinance work.

Jesus said, “To him who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone” (Revelation 2:17, see also 10:9).

Genesis 2:17 pointed to the need to eat the fruit of any tree in the garden to retain peace, happiness, and tranquility (possibly A. muscaria), but not the fruit of the tree of knowledge (possibly datura).

Importantly, visions and ecstasies in early Mormonism are associated with ordinances involving the serving of bread and wine sacraments, and anointings of bodies with anointings; while the expected visionary Nauvoo temple endowment also features oil anointings but adds plucking fruit from tree branches. In June, Joseph Smith ( 1839 , pp. 17–18) told trusted leaders:

God hath not revealed anything to Joseph, but what He will make known unto … the least Saint … for the day must come when no man need say to his neighbor, ‘Know ye the Lord; for all shall know … [he] will have the personage of Jesus Christ to attend him … and the visions of the heavens will be opened unto him, and the Lord will teach him face to face.

And this greater priesthood administereth the gospel and holdeth the key of the mysteries of the kingdom, even the key of the knowledge of God.— Therefore, in the ordinances thereof, the power of godliness is manifest; and without the ordinance thereof, and the authority of the priesthood, the power of godliness is not manifest unto men in the flesh; for without this no man can see the face of God, even the Father, and live. ( Smith, 1833 , Section 4)

Descriptions of the visionary dreams of Joseph Smith’s father, and his first vision, his Indian visions, and early Mormon visions in Kirtland Ohio (discussed below) manifest mood-elevating properties. The mood-elevating effects of entheogens are well established: eventually, they will be one modality of managing treatment-resistant depression (see articles in Winkelman & Sessa, 2019 ). The antidepressant effects of psychedelic experience suggest motivational salience for entheogen use throughout history and specifically in the Smith family to facilitate visionary experience and as antidepressants. La Barre ( 1947 ) observed that Native American peyote use in religious confessionals provided a primitive form of psychotherapy. Similarly, the mood-elevating sequelae of Joseph Smith’s use of entheogens in early Mormon rituals and confessionals was practical psychotherapy for early Mormons; and likely unconscious salience for conversion to Mormonism and convert resilience during the hardships of Mormon diasporas.

The effects of cultivating this seed expand the mind, enlarge the soul, stimulate the taste of light, and produce inexpressible joy and happiness. In these passages, Joseph Smith encapsulated the very meaning of the current meanings of “psychedelic” and “entheogen.” More importantly, at least as far as Joseph Smith is concerned, the reader of The Book of Mormon is invited in this passage to experience the same psychedelic or entheogenic enlightenment, synesthesia, and transformation as he had.

Two examples will be most relevant here: Lehi’s dream of the tree of life and Alma’s parable of a seed that grows into a tree of life. Joseph Jr. inserts into The Book of Mormon a vision of an Edenic tree its fruit, and upon ingesting it, the profound experience of the love of God – nearly identical to his father’s Edenic vision in 1811 ( Smith, 1830 , pp. 18–21). Another probable reference to synesthetic bodily symptoms in the text of The Book of Mormon appears in a parable by the prophet Alma comparing God’s word to a seed. The parable describes the cultivation of a plant from seed, ultimately to a full-grown tree revealed to be, like Lehi’s, “a tree of life” bearing fruit.

Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me. ( Smith, 1830 , p. 315)

One feature of visionary experiences reported in The Book of Mormon, synesthesia (the stimulation of one sense modality provoking sensation in another) strongly suggests the effect of an ingested entheogen. In The Book of Mormon, Joseph informs the convert that after ingesting the seed of the fruit of the tree, they should expect it to feel “swelling” within the chest closely followed by “swelling motions.” After the o