.Mushroom Church

Inside the tiny, sparse office of the Holy Trinity of Divine Church, you are greeted by septuagenarian Bart Clanton. While he doesn’t resonate with titles like pastor, Clanton is behind the formation, and ethos, of the church.

“It’s a syncretic religion,” Clanton begins. “And a syncretic religion basically takes parts of different beliefs and different religions and creates something new.” One does have to “join the church” online, or in person. A California driver’s license is required.

You can prostrate, flagellate, meditate or pray your entire lifetime and never reach a glimpse of enlightenment—the godhead, the source of all sources, or any sign that you are even being heard. Well, if talking to the mystery of mysteries piques your interest, this might be the church for you. Santa Cruz’s The Holy Trinity of Divine Church offers a sacrament that can give you an immediate experience into the infinite. And that sacrament is a mushroom—of the genus Psilocybe.

Don’t immediately dismiss this as all fringe lunacy. Michael Pollan’s 2018 New York Times bestseller, How to Change Your Mind, has an entire chapter dedicated to the history of this particular kind of shroom. Psilocybin cubensis was brought to our modern culture’s attention in 1957, in a photo essay titled Seeking the Magic Mushroom, in Life magazine.

Perhaps it was the mushroom’s reputation as a “wonder drug”—seemingly with positive effects on everything from alcoholism to anxiety and a host of other disorders—that made the tiny shroom a large threat. By 1966 it was made illegal, as a Schedule 1 drug, alongside incredibly addictive drugs like heroin. But due to people like Pollan, and an enthusiastic and organized movement to decriminalize psilocybin in Denver, Colorado—the little shroom that couldn’t can again.

Consider this. What if everyone was dead wrong about most aspects of reality? What if this dimension of iPhones, jobs, rent and social media isn’t all there is? What if the sacrament challenged all your preconceived notions of what your life was actually about? What if there were untold other dimensions that we could inhabit? Not imaginative hallucinations, but tangible ones that you could visit for hours, that cement “the otherness” in your psyche.

Clanton doesn’t mince words when it comes to the church. “When the mushroom is consecrated it becomes the essence of God. It’s called Transubstantiation.”

This is not just an idea of Western civilization. The Aztecs used a mushroom to produce visions, called teonanácatl, which translates to “flesh of the gods.” The mushroom and god have a long history, so if you decide to enter the church, you’re walking into a stream that has flowed for longer than recorded history.

Perhaps the most acknowledged philosopher who spoke about the so-called Magic Mushroom was Terence McKenna, who sought to crush the woo woo nonsense he had heard about the mushroom but instead became its biggest advocate. Like Saul on the road to Damascus, what McKenna experienced was profound. From that point on, McKenna spoke in elegant passages about how it was specifically the mushroom that caused Homo sapiens to evolve. McKenna also espoused that mushrooms could also be a communication tool, used by aliens, to spread knowledge throughout the universe.

“The Eleusinian Mysteries,” Clanton starts, “were a Greek initiation ceremony that Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius was a member of. They would take a psychedelic, be it mushroom or ergot, and talk with god. It wasn’t a belief, it was an actual experience.”

Clanton is very hands-on when you visit, so be sure to listen closely. “We get a lot of different kinds of people. Some tried it in the 1960s and wanted to revisit the terrain. I always try to guide them on what particular mushroom they’re looking for. And what the correct dose would be. It’s not just the gram dosage that I look at, but the concentration within that particular mushroom. They all have different strengths.”

Having spent years getting the church up and running, Clanton is clear on his message. “I’m just here to help facilitate and guide people in direct ways, so they’re having good experiences, and then they come back and they tell the story. Amazing stories of how it changed their lives.”

For more information, visit holytrinityofdivinechurch.org.