Sacred Bliss

Ferrara examines how cannabis has informed the history of religions, tracing this history geographically to show the ways that Indians, Middle Easterners, Chinese, Africans, and Native Americans have variously incorporated cannabis as a psychoactive, medicinal, or textile plant throughout most of human history. In addition to Rastafarians, religious users include Zoroastrian mystics, Muslim Sufis, and Native American shamans, who relied on the drug to achieve experiences that blurred distinctions between self and other. Casting such experiences as central to religious expression, Ferrara suggests that cannabis can provide mystical experiences for many who cannot achieve them otherwise. He provides significant context to understanding the religious traditions he discusses, a helpful move to ensure that cannabis appears as an ancillary rather than central component. His final chapter on the Euro-American literary connection to cannabis feels slightly out of place, but shows that experimentation with the substance has a long history in the West. The work remains mostly analytic, but his afterword moves slightly toward arguing for increased legalization of cannabis. After laying out the history of potential spiritual benefits, this convincing conclusion provides a quiet rationale for more openness and a return to cannabis use as a spiritual practice. * Publishers Weekly *
The history of marijuana usage stretches far back beyond the era of hippies or reggae fans. According to this book, humans have been consuming cannabis for various reasons since their earliest days. Far from being recreational, though, cannabis has been used in religions all across history and all around the world to dissolve the boundaries between the self and the divine and open the mind to ecstatic experiences. The author describes cannabis use from every continent and throughout most religions. . . . [I]t’s undeniable that worshippers have been using it for centuries. Ferrara urges abandoning marijuana fears and advocates for cannabis’ potential as a bringer of 'peak experiences,' which he speculates might lead to a kinder, more peaceful society. * Booklist *
Mark S. Ferrara is your affable liberal professor who is not so secretly known to take a puff or two. Sacred Bliss: A Spiritual History of Cannabis is a brief but scholarly history of the role of marijuana within spiritual and religious traditions from ancient India to modern Europe. Ferrara’s basic thesis is that humanity has for millennia used cannabis as an entheogen, or ritual drug, to stimulate what he calls 'peak experiences'— a term borrowed from psychologist Abraham Maslow that refers to brief moments of sudden spiritual insight, 'an important response to the panhuman yearning for paradise.' [Ferrara's message is] warmhearted and inviting. * Washington Post *
Ferrara chronicles the medical and spiritual use of marijuana in different cultures throughout history to demonstrate its curative nature and universal propensity to induce ‘peak experiences,’ moments of heightened awareness. He explores the substance’s role in the religious beliefs of Indians, Iranians, Africans, and Native Americans; in the medical practices of the Chinese; and in European and American literary traditions. He also examines how the use and perception of marijuana in these cultures evolved over time, from BCE to the present day. . . .[O]verall, the book provides a cohesive, interesting, and well-supported argument: that numerous diverse cultures have consumed, and might continue to consume, marijuana with the same positive spiritual and medical results. Since Ferrara connects this research to contemporary attitudes about the use and legality of marijuana in the US, the audience for this book will extend beyond religion to those interested in topical political issues. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. * CHOICE *
This scholarly, yet readable book swept me into one story after another. It takes the reader back to the Rig Veda (c.1500 BC) and the spiritual significance of cannabis in India. Based on research along with some speculation, it explores the herb’s relationship to Chinese medicine, Coptic church, Dagga people, Rastafarians, ancient Greek mysteries, and maybe, hobbits. Of course, Paris’ 19th century Hashish Eaters Society is included. Leaving no stone uncovered, it summarizes the 16th century satirical novel, Gargantua. * American Herb Association Quarterly Newsletter *
As it turns out, the hippies were right. More than a recreational drug, more than a tonic for physical ills, marijuana has always been medicine for the spirit. Mark Ferrara's Sacred Bliss is far and away the best available study of the drug’s neglected spiritual history. I recommend it highly. -- John Charles Chasteen, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, author of Getting High: Marijuana through the Ages
With scholarly acumen and attunement to the pulses of social evolution, Mark Ferrara guides us through centuries of respectful cannabis use within diverse world religions, and he thoughtfully explores its potential to contribute to the spiritual awakening so urgently needed in the early twenty-first century. This book is a critical, invaluable, and timely "missing link" in the literature on marijuana and on how certain non-ordinary states of awareness may contribute to psychological and spiritual development. -- William A. Richards, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, author of Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences
This book offers a concise, accessible history of the diverse spiritual contexts cannabis has occupied for millennia, from the ancient Indus Valley to the U.S. today. Many cultures have valued the plant as a pathway to heightened creativity and deeper self-awareness. Ferrara argues that knowledge of its spiritual history can help people who partake nowadays find greater meaning and insight in their experiences. -- Chris Duvall, University of New Mexico
Ferrara takes us on a lucid, provocative, and engaging journey, demonstrating how cannabis has been used—over thousands of years and in an astonishing array of cultural settings—to open the mind to a realm of consciousness beyond the boundaries of the ego. This meticulously researched book will be of interest to anyone curious about how human beings have sought to discover a sacred dimension of reality in the midst of ordinary life. Readers will find here an entirely new perspective on the current debate over the pharmaceutical and recreational value of marijuana. -- C. W. Huntington, Jr., Hartwick College, author of Maya: A Novel