Adar 1 - Preparation
We are the recipients of a wondrous gift—a tradition that places honorable significance on preparing for a moment of sacred action. This pre-work, hachanah—a spiritual practice in and of itself—can be as simple as cooking and tasting food for Shabbat before it begins or as elaborate as reciting kavvanot—mystical intention-setting liturgy—as a way of focusing one’s mind and heart on the myriad metaphysical associations contained within a single mitzvah. Mythic-historic events are understood as occurring in anticipation of others—the Exodus from Egypt was a precursor for the Receiving of the Torah, the six days of Creation are a necessary antecedent for the blessing of Shabbat to emerge, and this world is merely an antechamber for the world that is coming. Acquiring the proper concentration and intentionality before prayer is so dire, writes the Rambam, that prayer without it cannot be considered prayer at all, “for it is like a body without a spirit.”
This type of preparatory phase has been well-understood and utilized in shamanic and indigenous cultures that have worked with plant medicines for generations—adhering to strict diets, refraining from sexual activity or intoxicants, days of prayer and fasting, preparing the medicine itself, all leading up to the medicine journey. As these healing traditions and their medicines became the subjects of anthropological research and, later, the precursory models of early psychedelic psychotherapy, the preconditions for psychedelic journeying became encapsulated by a simple phrase: set and setting. These terms, largely ascribed to Tim Leary, came to describe how one’s mindset, their pre-existing beliefs, opinions, feelings about what they were about to embark upon, and the physical setting in which they would be doing this work, including their relationships with their therapists or guides and their interventions, could all impact and sway the experience of the patient or journeyer. The preparatory conditions for such work, as researcher Ido Hartogsohn notes, are fundamental for public health and education: “a shared body of knowledge on the do’s and don’ts of responsible and effective drug use in a world where drug harms cannot be nullified but can doubtlessly be minimized.” (“Constructing drug effects: A history of set and setting”, Drug Science, Policy and Law, 2017).
How might we begin to think of the preparatory phase and set and setting of Jewish psychedelic work? As we enter into this leap year’s first month of Adar, we have the gift of an entire thirty more days to set our intentions for the most psychedelic holiday of the Jewish calendar. Yet, we have an even more expansive view of how long to prepare for Purim from Rabbi Moshe Harlap, one of Rav Kook’s closest students. He writes, “[Because] Purim is the day of revealing the inner will of Israel, the entire year is in preparation for it. Whatever operates according to the aspect of concealment the rest of the year, it is revealed on Purim. Everything is in a process of ascension: on Purim, whatever lies within the soul becomes externally manifest within the body, and then a new and even greater interiority is absorbed within the soul. This is how things elevate year after year—the inner toward the outer, and the innermost toward the inner. Happy is the one who merits to straighten their path, knowing what lies before them, continuing to elevate ever higher, level upon level, ad infinitum, onward and upward, onward and upward.” )Mei Marom, Purim, pg. 136)
Jewish psychedelic preparation, like Rav Harlap’s year-long Purim preparation, is not a brief event. It is a lifetime dedicated to the process of refinement, discerning the most hidden aspects of our selves to give them voice and embodied dimensionality, making room for even deeper expressions to emerge on the day we meet our medicine.
Hodesh tov,
Z
