Growing and Knowing Global Sacred Plants and Fungi

In this two-hour interactive presentation, Bob Otis MDiv, Garden Steward of Sacred Garden Community Church, will respectfully introduce plants, fungi, and molecules that have been recognized as sacred by traditions from the global South to the far North, and that animate both ancient and emerging currents in the East and West. After establishing a warm setting through a non-sectarian invocation, Bob will open discussion by asking how and why so many traditions have seen these plants as sacred, even as sacraments. Along with discussing botany and chemistry, Bob will explore the cultural lineages of the plants and fungi — from traditional master narratives to the emerging "positive post-modern" approaches driving contemporary sacramental community.

At the heart of the presentation will be an up close and personal encounter with the living plants brought to the talk: Tobacco, a powerful teacher of relationship; the grand and warm phenethylamine-bearing entheogenic cacti of the "Big Sky"; the twining, vining, transformative plants and mushrooms of the tryptamine-rich "Deepest Forest"; the gloriously flowered and dangerously powerful anti-cholinergic nightshades of the "Brightest Night"; and finally to "Infinite Varieties of Perfection" including relatively unique plants and fungi including Amanita muscaria, Kanna, and others. We would like to invite you to learn, grow, and intimately know the sacred plants, molecules, and traditions of our miraculous world!

This event will also be streamed live on Youtube.

Interested in volunteering for this event? Please fill out this form.

About Bob Otis:

Over 40 years of engagement with family, traditional and Western teachers guide Bob’s work with entheogenic Sacraments. Bob holds a Master’s in Divinity from University Chicago and is an ordained Pastor and Chief Garden Steward for Sacred Garden Community Church. He was founding Chairperson for Decriminalize Nature Oakland, is a co-founder of Sacred Plant Alliance, and is Chair of Alma Institute (Prop 109 facilitation training). He has been an invited Advisory Committee member to Oregon, California, and Colorado decriminalization / legalization policy initiatives.

Host or Publisher The Berkeley Alembic Foundation