Magic Nanaimo

10/12/2026

We are open tomorrow from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Thanksgiving.

10/09/2026

Thursday this coming week in Duncan!

08/27/2026

It should be available subsidized by the government or by Health Canada. Growers, landlords and staff have to be paid.

08/26/2026

Stanislav Grof spent over five decades studying altered states of consciousness, and this line captures something he returned to again and again: psychedelics aren't a shortcut or a party drug, they're an instrument. A way of seeing the mind at a resolution psychiatry never had access to before.

The microscope revealed an entire hidden layer of reality (cells, microbes, mechanisms) that had always been there, just invisible. Grof believed psychedelics could do the same for the psyche by exposing the architecture of trauma, memory, and meaning that talk therapy alone often can't reach.

The research happening now, decades after Grof's early work was shut down by prohibition, is finally catching up to what he was pointing at all along.

Used with structure, intention, and respect, these are instruments for a kind of seeing we're only beginning to understand.

08/26/2026

DMT users sometimes get locked out, mid-trip, with no warning. An entity waves a finger and the visions stop. Yet the drug is still in their bloodstream, which makes no sense within current pharmacological models.

Cambridge neuroscientist Andrew Gallimore has spent 30 years on DMT. He disagrees with the mainstream neuroscience view, associated with researchers like Robin Carhart-Harris, that treats DMT entities as a vivid form of hallucination, possibly drawing on Jungian archetypes (the wise elder, the trickster, the guide) that are wired into human cognition.

His case against pure hallucination is that archetypes explain instinctive responses, but not richly detailed alien worlds the brain never learned to build. Entities reportedly solve complex topology problems instantly, and sessions show apparent continuity across separate trips.

And Gallimore has plans to test it. At a legal Caribbean research site, subjects will try to read a randomly switching screen they can't see, through an entity, looking for above chance correlation. A separate study will bring chronically locked out users in for EEG monitoring.

If it works, we could have proof that these are more than hallucinations. Someone's finally testing the question instead of just debating it.

08/26/2026

In one of the strangest psychedelic studies ever conducted, researchers recruited 33 professional religious leaders from Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism and gave them high doses of psilocybin to see what would happen to their spiritual lives.

They included priests, rabbis, ministers, an Islamic leader and a Zen Buddhist roshi — people who had already spent years or decades praying, meditating, studying scripture and contemplating the divine.

Yet after their psilocybin sessions, more than 90% described the experience as among the most spiritually meaningful and sacred of their lives. Around 42% reportedly ranked it as the single most profound experience they had ever had.

Participants received substantial doses of psilocybin while lying down with eyeshades and music, with trained facilitators present. Many reported classic features of mystical experience: unity, sacredness, transcendence of time and space, awe and a powerful sense that what they experienced was profoundly real.

But perhaps the most interesting findings appeared afterward. Sixteen months later, 79% reported lasting positive effects on their religious practices and everyday sense of the sacred, while 71% said they had developed greater appreciation for religious traditions other than their own. Around 78% believed the experience had made them more effective religious leaders.

Rather than simply reinforcing existing beliefs, psilocybin appeared in many cases to loosen attachment to rigid interpretations and increase openness toward other spiritual traditions.

The experiences weren't universally blissful. Nearly half ranked their session among the five most psychologically challenging experiences of their lives. One participant described theirs as “dark, empty, terrifying.” No serious adverse events were reported, but the finding underscores how psychologically intense high-dose psychedelic experiences can be.

The study also has important limitations. It was small, participants were predominantly white and male, several major religious traditions weren't represented, and people willing to volunteer for a psilocybin study are hardly representative of clergy generally.

For thousands of years, religions have developed prayer, meditation, fasting, ritual and contemplation as methods for approaching experiences of transcendence. Here, a single supported psychedelic experience produced something that many lifelong religious practitioners considered comparable to — or more profound than — anything they had previously encountered.

A molecule can reliably produce experiences that even people who have spent their lives studying the sacred recognise as among the most spiritually significant experiences they have ever had.

The study: “Effects of Psilocybin on Religious and Spiritual Attitudes and Behaviors in Clergy from Various Major World Religions” published in Psychedelic Medicine.

08/23/2026

08/23/2026

What if psychedelics aren't drugs, but ancient technologies?

In a fascinating conversation on Win-Win, Liv Boeree speaks with an Indigenous spiritual leader from the Huni Kuin people of the Brazilian Amazon about technology, plant medicines and the disappearance of ancestral knowledge.

While we usually think of technology as computers, phones and AI, he describes medicines such as ayahuasca and rapé as “ancestral technologies” — tools his people use to connect with nature, ancestors and traditional knowledge.

He argues that modern technology isn't necessarily the enemy. Internet access has helped his community share its culture, education and conservation work with the outside world. The danger is allowing one form of technology to replace another.

As forests disappear, he says medicinal plants, traditions and knowledge accumulated across generations disappear with them.

What if humanity's newest technologies could actually help preserve some of its oldest?

Source: I Asked an Amazonian Shaman About AI & The Future, Win-Win with Liv Boeree YouTube Channel

08/22/2026

What happens when one of the world’s most powerful psychedelics meets someone who has spent decades trying to reach the same place through meditation?

YouTuber Dakota of Earth travelled to Varanasi with a Mexican shaman, offering 5-MeO-DMT — known as “sapo” — to several Hindu holy people.

Their reactions were fascinating. One sadhu reportedly emerged crying after seeing Vishnu sustaining the universe. An Aghori woman called out to Shiva before declaring: “Success, success.”

But Aghori Bavani Baba barely reacted at all.

After taking what Dakota described as an enormous dose, he simply sat silently for around five minutes. Then he opened his eyes and asked: “Are you happy now?”

Bavani didn't dismiss the psychedelic. He described it as a genuine glimpse of “the light” and potentially useful for someone who needs proof that such a state exists.

But then he said this:

“Sapo is one five-minute light, but it goes. Sadhu means light forever.”

It's a fascinating distinction. Psychedelics might allow you to visit profound states of consciousness. Spiritual practice asks whether you can actually become the person who lives from them.

From Facebook group called Mushies.