Q&A with William Leonard Pickard

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In conversation with Julian Vayne.

William Leonard Pickard:

Alleged to have produced "90% of the world's LSD," William Leonard Pickard is a former drug policy fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, research associate in neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, and deputy director of the Drug Policy Analysis Program at UCLA. With two life sentences without parole, he served 20 years in maximum security federal prisons, and was released in 2020. His book celebrated psychedelic novel The Rose of Paracelsus - written in pencil while imprisoned - was first published in 2015. Currently he is a senior advisor, scientific advisory boards, of JLS Fund LP, PsyGen, and the Fireside Project.

Julian Vayne:

Julian Vayne is a British independent scholar and author with over four decades of experience within esoteric culture: from Druidry to Chaos Magic, from indigenous Shamanism through to Freemasonry and Witchcraft. Growing up in the Britain of punk and then rave culture Julian immersed himself in the philosophy and techniques of magic. His journey into group ritual practice began within the Western Esoteric Tradition when he was 16. Since then he has worked in ceremony with practitioners from many different lands and lineages.

Julian is a senior member of the Magical Pact of the Illuminates of Thanateros and widely recognised as one of Britain’s leading occultists. In the 1990s Julian edited Britain’s best selling pagan newspaper Pagan Voice and in 2001 published one of the first books of the modern psychedelic renaissance, Pharmakon: Drugs and the Imagination. In addition to exploring traditional sacred medicines, Julian’s work includes the first published accounts of the entheogenic ritual use of ketamine and several novel psychedelic sacraments.

Today Julian is the author of books, essays, journals and articles in both the academic and esoteric press. He sees his work as part of the process to help re-imagine an earth-centered, non-dogmatic, open-source spirituality. He shares his practice through mentoring, workshops, online teaching and retreats. Julian’s style is highly collaborative. With an academic background in teaching and learning, and as co-author of numerous texts, Julian’s style emphasises curiosity, collaboration and creativity.

His approach is informed by chaos magic, deep ecology and lineages within Wicca and Tantra. Julian is a co-organiser of the psychedelic conference Breaking Convention, and a Trustee of The Psychedelic Museum Project. A founding member of the post-prohibition think-tank Transform, Julian sits on the academic board of The Journal of Psychedelic Studies, and has been a visiting lecturer at several British universities. He is an advocate of post-prohibition culture and supporter of psychedelic prisoners through the Scales project.

Julian facilitates psychedelic ceremony, as well as providing one-to-one psychedelic integration sessions and support. He is the author of the celebrated Getting Higher: The Manual of Psychedelic Ceremony. Since 2011 he has been sharing his work through The Blog of Baphomet.