LSD — My Problem Child
Albert Hofmann
9. Correspondence with the Poet-Physician Walter Vogt
My friendship with the physician, psychiatrist, and writer Walter
Vogt, M.D., is also among the personal contacts that I owe to
LSD. As the following extract from our correspondence shows, it
was less the medicinal aspects of LSD, important to the physician,
than the consciousness-altering effects on the depth of the psyche,
of interest to the writer, that constituted the theme of our correspondence.
Muri/Bern, 22 November 1970
Dear Mr. Hofmann,
Last night I dreamed that I was invited to tea in a cafe by a
friendly family in Rome. This family also knew the pope, and so
the pope sat at—the same table to tea with us. He was all in
white and also wore a white miter. He sat there so handsome and
was silent.
And today I suddenly had the idea of sending you my Vogel auf
dem Tisch [Bird on the table—as a visiting card if you so
wish—a book that remained a little apocryphal, which upon reflection
I do not regret, although the Italian translator is firmly convinced
that is my best. (Ah yes, the pope is also an Italian. So it goes.
…)
Possibly this little work will interest you. It was written in
1966 by an author who at that time still had not had any shred
of experience with psychedelic substances and who read the reports
about medicinal experiments with these drugs devoid of understanding.
However, little has changed since, except that now the misgiving
comes from the other side.
I suppose that your discovery has caused a hiatus (not directly
a Saul-to-Paul conversion as Roland Fischer says…) in my
work (also a large word) - and indeed, that which I have written
since has become rather realistic or at least less expressive.
In any case I could not have brought off the cool realism of my
TV piece "Spiele der Macht" [Games of power] without
it. The different drafts attest it, in case they are still lying
around somewhere.
Should you have interest and time for a meeting, it would delight
me very much to visit you sometime for a conversation.
W. V.
Burg, i.L. 28 November 1970
Dear Mr. Vogt,
If the bird that alighted on my table was able to find its way
to me, this is one more debt I owe to the magical effect of LSD.
I could soon write a book about all of the results that derive
from that experiment in 1943....
A. H.
Muri/Bern, 13 March 1971
Dear Mr. Hofmann,
Enclosed is a critique of Jünger's Annahenngen [Approaches],
from the daily paper, that will presumably interest you....
It seems to me that to hallucinate—to dream—to write, stands
at all times in contrast to everyday consciousness, and their
functions are complementary. Here I can naturally speak only for
myself. This could be different with others—it is also truly
difficult to speak with others about such things, because people
often speak altogether different languages....
However, since you are now gathering autographs, and do me the
honor of incorporating some of my letters in your collection,
I enclose for you the manuscript of my "testament"—in
which your discovery plays a role as "the only joyous invention
of the twentieth century...."
W. V.
dr. walter vogts most recent testament 1969
I wish to have no special funeral
only expensive and obscene orchids
innumerable little birds with gay names
no naked dancers
but
psychedelic garments
loudspeaker in every corner and
nothing but the latest beatles record [Abbey Road]
one hundred thousand million times
and
do what you like ["Blind Faith"]
on an endless tape
nothing more
than a popular Christ with a halo of genuine gold
and a beloved mourning congregation
that pumped themselves full with acid [acid = LSD]
till they go to heaven [From Abbey Road, side two]
one two three four five six seven
possibly we will encounter one another there
most cordially dedicated
to Dr. Albert Hofmann
Beginning of Spring 1971
Burg i.L., 29 March 1971
Dear Mr. Vogt,
You have again presented me with a lovely letter and a very valuable
autograph, the testament 1969....
Very remarkable dreams in recent times induce me to test a connection
between the composition (chemical) of the evening meal and the
quality of dreams. Yes, LSD is also something that one eats....
A. H.
Muri/Bern, 5 September 1971
Dear Mr. Hofmann,
Over the weekend at Murtensee [On that Sunday, I (A. H.) hovered
over the Murtensee in the balloon of my friend E. I., who had
taken me along as passenger.] I often thought of you—a most
radiant autumn day. Yesterday, Saturday, thanks to one tablet
of aspirin (on account of a headache or mild flu), I experienced
a very comical flashback, like with mescaline (of which I have
had only a little, exactly once)....
I have read a delightful essay by Wasson about mushrooms; he divides
mankind into mycophobes and mycophiles.... Lovely fly agarics
must now be growing in the forest near you. Sometime shouldn't
we sample some?
W. V.
Muri/Bern, 7 September 1971
Dear Mr. Hofmann,
Now I feel I must write briefly to tell you what I have done outside
in the sun, on the dock under your balloon: I finally wrote some
notes about our visit in Villars-sur-Ollons (with Dr. Leary),
then a hippie-bark went by on the lake, self-made like from a
Fellini film, which I sketched, and over and above it I drew your
balloon.
W. V.
Burg i.L., 15 April 1972
Dear Mr. Vogt,
Your television play "Spiele der Macht" [Games of power]
has impressed me extraordinarily.
I congratulate you on this magnificent piece, which allows mental
cruelty to become conscious, and therefore also acts in its way
as "consciousness- expanding", and can thereby prove
itself therapeutic in a higher sense, like ancient tragedy.
A. H.
Burg i.L., 19 May 1973
Dear Mr. Vogt,
Now I have already read your lay sermon three times, the description
and interpretation of your Sinai Trip. [Walter Vogt: Mein Sinai
Trip. Eine Laienpredigt [My Sinai trip: A lay sermon] (Verlag
der Arche, Zurich, 1972). This publication contains the text of
a lay sermon that Walter Vogt gave on 14 November 1971 on the
invitation of Parson Christoph Mohl, in the Protestant church
of Vaduz (Lichtenstein), in the course of a series of sermons
by writers, and in addition contains an afterword by the author
and by the inviting parson. It involves the description and interpretation
of an ecstatic-religious experience evoked by LSD, that the author
is able to "place in a distant, if you will superficial,
analogy to the great Sinai Trip of Moses." It is not only
the "patriarchal atmosphere" that is to be traced out
of these descriptions, that constitutes this analogy; there are
deeper references, which are more to be read between the lines
of this text.] Was it really an LSD trip?… It was a courageous
deed, to choose such a notorious event as a drug experience as
the theme of a sermon, even a lay sermon. But the questions raised
by hallucinogenic drugs do actually belong in the church—in
a prominent place in the church, for they are sacred drugs (peyotl,
teonanacatl, ololiuhqui, with which LSD is mostly closely related
by chemical structure and activity).
I can fully agree with what you say in your introduction about
the modern ecclesiastical religiosity: the three sanctioned states
of consciousness (the waking condition of uninterrupted work and
performance of duty, alcoholic intoxication, and sleep), the distinction
between two phases of psychedelic inebriation (the first phase,
the peak of the trip, in which the cosmic relationship is experienced,
or the submersion into one's own body, in which everything that
is, is within; and the second phase, characterized as the phase
of enhanced comprehension of symbols), and the allusion to the
candor that hallucinogens bring about in consciousness states.
These are all observations that are of fundamental importance
in the judgment of hallucinogenic inebriation.
The most worthwhile spiritual benefit from LSD experiments was
the experience of the inextricable intertwining of the physical
and spiritual. "Christ in matter" (Teilhard de Chardin).
Did the insight first come to you also through your drug experiences,
that we must descend "into the flesh, which we are,"
in order to get new prophesies?
A criticism of your sermon: you allow the "deepest experience
that there is"—"The kingdom of heaven is within you"—to
be uttered by Timothy Leary. This sentence, quoted without the
indication of its true source, could be interpreted as ignorance
of one, or rather the principal truth of Christian belief.
One of your statements deserves universal recognition: "There
is no non-ecstatic religious experience."…
Next Monday evening I shall be interviewed on Swiss television
(about LSD and the Mexican magic drugs, on the program "At
First Hand"). I am curious about the sort of questions that
will be asked…
A. H.
Muri/Bern, 24 May 1973
Dear Mr. Hofmann,
Of course it was LSD—only I did not want to write about it explicitly,
I really do not know just why myself.... The great emphasis I
placed on the good Leary, who now seems to me to be somewhat flipped
out, as the prime witness, can indeed only be explained by the
special context of the talk or sermon.
I must admit that the perception that we must descend "into
the flesh, which we are" actually first came to me with LSD.
I still ruminate on it, possibly it even came "too late"
for me in fact, although more and more I advocate your opinion
that LSD should be taboo for youth (taboo, not forbidden, that
is the difference…).
The sentence that you like, "there is no nonecstatic religious
experience," was apparently not liked so much by others—for
example, by my (almost only) literary friend and minister-lyric
poet Kurt Marti.… But in any case, we are practically never
of the same opinion about anything, and notwithstanding, we constitute
when we occasionally communicate by phone and arrange little activities
together, the smallest minimafia of Switzerland.
W. V.
Burg i.L., 13 April 1974
Dear Mr. Vogt,
Full of suspense, we watched your TV play "Pilate before
the Silent Christ" yesterday evening.
… as a representation of the fundamental man-God relationship:
man, who comes to God with his most difficult questions, which
finally he must answer himself, because God is silent. He does
not answer them with words. The answers are contained in
the book of his creation (to which the questioning man himself
belongs). True natural science deciphering of this text.
A. H.
Muri/Bern, 11 May 1974
Dear Mr. Hofmann,
I have composed a "poem" in half twilight, that I dare
to send to you. At first I wanted to send it to Leary, but this
would make no sense.
Leary in jail
Gelpke is dead
Treatment in the asylum
is this your psychedelic
revolution?
Had we taken seriously something
with which one only ought to play
or
vice-versa…
W. V.