Mission

“...Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question..."

- William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature

The Archive Project is an initiative of the Yaden Lab at the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. We are creating an archive of published accounts and survey responses of people describing altered states of consciousness, both non-drug-induced as well as those triggered by psychedelics, throughout history and from around the world with an emphasis on non-Western sources. Our mission is to build an open digital collection of discrete psychedelic and non-substance-induced experiences in order to preserve, protect, and study the rich and diversified history of humanity’s engagement with altered states of consciousness.

Our archive serves as a repository for articles, books, documents, and personal stories which recount psychedelic, spiritual, mystical, and other non-ordinary experiences from across the globe, and throughout written history. We collect, organize, and digitize these materials to ensure they are accessible to researchers, healthcare professionals, historians, and the general public. We also collect contemporary accounts across cultures through large-scale surveying. By cataloging and indexing these sources, we provide a valuable resource for studying the history of psychedelics across different cultural, spiritual and linguistic traditions, understanding advancements in psychedelic-assisted therapy, and ultimately gaining greater insight into human consciousness.

Our archive aims to be a comprehensive and inclusive repository that represents the diversity of psychedelic practices, experiences, and perspectives. We are particularly committed to the incorporation of “non-W.E.I.R.D.” (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) experiences in order to evince the cultural and spiritual significance of traditional use. We strive to build a collection which reflects both the promises as well as the challenges and controversies which have shaped societal perspectives on traditional, recreational and medical use of psychedelics and non-drug-induced altered states of consciousness throughout history and across cultures.

We recognize the value of and appreciate other archives that have been created related to drug experiences, such as Erowid, and non-drug-induced altered states of consciousness, such as the Hardy Religious and Spiritual Experience Project. Please let us know of other archives that we can acknowledge here!

Outputs

Anthropological Fieldwork in Africa

Our knowledge of historical use of serotonergic psychedelics is heavily informed by their traditional use in indigenous groups from North and South America. But in 2023, a team of researchers published a paper suggesting that Basotho healers in Lesotho (near South Africa) also use native psilocybin mushrooms for ritual and medicinal purposes. If true, this would constitute the first known case of native serotonergic psychedelic use outside the Americas -- and given the medical ramifications of knowledge collected from the Americas, further investigation would stand to advance not only the ethnographic record but our understanding of psychedelics as a whole.

Under the direction of Dr. Manvir Singh, anthropologist Eli Elster recently conducted the first in-depth ethnographic survey of psilocybin use in Lesotho. Over the course of two months, he and his collaborator interviewed 30 healers, several of whom independently confirmed their usage of psilocybin as a hallucinogen, oneirogen, and medicine. He is now looking for backers to help him continue his fieldwork in Lesotho. Financial support would allow him to further document the methods of preparation and administration employed by Basotho healers, record the subjective experiences triggered by their usage, and crucially, to collect physical samples of their psilocybin-based compounds. In addition, Eli will investigate the use of other, rarely studied hallucinogenic plants including Boophone disticha, which is also used for medicinal and ritual purposes there.

The Archive Project will fund anthropological field work in Africa (Lesotho) in 2026 to understand reported psilocybin use in that region. Please stay tuned for further updates here!

Historical and Linguistic Research

Our understanding of psychedelic history is shaped not only by scientific and anthropological research but also by careful linguistic and historical inquiry. Much of what we know about the evolution of ideas surrounding visionary experience, altered states, and the imagination comes from tracing how such concepts were articulated, suppressed, and revived across time. Through their work with the Psychedelic Archive Project at Johns Hopkins, Drs. Arielle Saiber and Cat Freddo are leading efforts to uncover and contextualize these deeper histories.

Drawing from medieval, Renaissance, and modern sources, Drs. Saiber and Freddo examine the language, symbolism, and philosophical frameworks that have shaped humanity’s understanding of the mind and its transformations. Their research explores how metaphors of illumination, dissolution, and ascent—long before the term psychedelic was coined—encoded profound insights into consciousness and its limits.

By recovering forgotten texts, tracing etymological lineages, and situating key moments of intellectual exchange, their work expands the historical record of psychedelic thought beyond the modern era. In doing so, Drs. Saiber and Freddo are helping to build the first comprehensive linguistic and conceptual map of the psychedelic imagination—one that connects ancient speculation, early modern mysticism, and contemporary scientific inquiry into a continuous and evolving conversation about the nature of mind.

The development of 2 graduate seminars: "The Visionary I" (Fall 2023) and "The Visionary II" (Spring 2024). The courses explored descriptions of altered states of conscious in Western Antiquity, the Italian Middle Ages, and the Italian Renaissance as well as interrogated the nature of altered states by reading work by scholars from various disciplines (Religious Studies, Literary Studies, Psychology, Neuroscience, History of Science, Critical Theory, Psychedelic Studies, Esoteric Studies). Website here:

https://www.thevisionarycourse.com/

Published "A Psychedelic Renaissance" ITER: Immagini e Testi per l’Europa del Rinascimento 1.2 (2024):197-208, which proposes a conversation between the Italian Renaissance and the Psychedelic Renaissance, looking at the concept of "rebirth" in general and the many things today's renaissance can learn from the successes and failures of the historic one. Link to article here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/388646593_A_Psychedelic_Renaissance

Organized panel and gave paper on the dosing of psychoactive botanicals in premodern medicine at the American Association of Italian Studies (AAIS) 2025

Organized panel and gave paper on the theory of intoxication in humoral medicine for (Renaissance Society of America (RSA) 2025

Organized panel on hallucinations and dream states in Italian literature for the American Association of Italian Studies (AAIS) 2026 and will give paper on the applications of belladonna in early modern Italy.

Founded working group on Drugs in Italian Literature with Dr. Gianna Albaum (Smith College), monthly meetings with about eight regular members

Wrote article on psychedelics in early modern Italian materia medica (under review at Renaissance Quarterly).

Natural Language Processing

In collaboration with computer scientist Dr. Salvatore Giorgi Dr. Johannes Eichstaedt of Stanford, the team is developing large-scale linguistic analyses of historical and contemporary texts to trace how the language of altered states of consciousness has shifted over time. Using natural language processing and machine learning tools, they are identifying key semantic patterns have remained the same and changed across centuries and cultures.

This work will create the first quantitative map of the evolving “altered states lexicon,” linking philosophical, literary, and scientific discourses in a shared semantic space. By integrating computational modeling with historical interpretation, Giorgi and Eichstaedt and the team aim to reveal how shifts in language both reflected and shaped humanity’s understanding of inner experience. Continued support for this research would help expand the dataset across languages and epochs, deepening our grasp of how psychedelic experiences and other non-drug-induced altered states of consciousness have been expressed—and repressed—through history and across cultures.

The Archive Project will fund large scale surveying across several WEIRD and non-WEIRD cultures to conduct natural language processing. Please stay tuned for further updates here!